


Contrary to Reason

by xel



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, NSFW and AU chapters are noted in the chapter title, i love them, so here have a bunch of pharmercy ficlets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-08
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2018-09-07 06:48:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 28
Words: 24,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8787847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xel/pseuds/xel
Summary: A series of frequently unrelated Pharmercy ficlets.
  Ch.24
  Pharah’s assignment had been clear, had been given by Winston, seconded by Jack Morrison - er, Solider: 76 - (both of whom had known Angela Ziegler before she’d become Reaper, back when she went by the call sign Mercy). It was simple: find her. 
  The implicit order of which had also included: and if possible, kill her. 
  Fareeha remembers Angela.





	1. Free Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a long way down.

_It’s a long way down,_ thinks Pharah initially.

Followed somewhat belatedly by the revelation that no matter how quick the end comes, or how tightly she shuts her eyes, there’ll be milliseconds - seconds even, precious, hateful seconds - of unhindered, unavoidable pain. And it will likely be worse than the botched amputation of her arm six years ago in a medical tent set up in the middle of the desert. The muddled way her mind screamed and her throat was ripped apart by sand, burned with the alcohol which was meant to dull the sensations but only drew more notice to the torn fleshy tendons it splashed against ... How that had been the second worst day of her entire life...

... and when compared … falling out of the sky,  the wind ripping air from her lungs, doesn’t seem particularly awful a way to go; even when those milliseconds, seconds even, come.

It is freedom, coated in the comfort of Raptora: her closest ally, a friend in solidarity. Its beeping left behind two feet above before it’s even had a chance to register in Pharah’s mind.

It is impossible to hear in the sky.

Everything is moving too quickly. Even her comrades' frantic cries in her ear piece are lost somewhere.

In this free fall (flames licking at the metal of her jet system, bullets raining, a hundred other pressing things screaming for her attention) Fareeha closes her eyes.

And can see Angela there, silhouetted like some ethereal guardian by blinding light.

Can see her mother, coated in warm blue, arms wrapped protectively around her rifle in the image of a war-saint.

Can see the faces of every squad mate she failed and all the people she has saved (can repeat their names, has memorized all of them).

When she opens her eyes again the ground is too close, her shoulder is on fire, the gold in her hair is whipping against her cheeks, leaving cuts behind like angry spirits lashing out.

Fareeha thinks: ‘if I were to do it again, the only thing I would change is how high I flew today.’

She imagines this is how Icarus must have felt as the wax melted and fell back to the earth which bore it.

Ana had always warned against the folly of reaching too high, or coasting too low - Fareeha had never learned to breath in the middle ground. It seems almost a shame to go.

 

* * *

 

 

Hana Song has known Fareeha Amari for eight months, three days and a handful of hours, minutes, and seconds. She can list the things she knows about the Egyptian woman on one and a half hands, can recite, by memory alone, her schedule, knows that Angela Ziegler loves her without question, and that Fareeha is suspiciously good at Frogger ... and nearly nothing else.

Hana's MEKA can fly a decent distance into the air although it is not made for it and, despite advisement from 76, who is leading the mission, she decides to test the limits of the MEKA's distance. 

Because Mercy is praying to gods who aren't real, Pharah's comms have gone offline, and anyone who is decently good at any video game is worth saving.

Because Fareeha Amari offered Hana a hug when she first arrived, said _I'm_ _sorry_ after her first mission, made her tea in the early morning when she couldn't sleep. Because Fareeha is a good person, an ally, and Hana has learned from the best of them that life holds value.

So she catches Pharah. Eighty feet from the ground and is scared to set her down.  


	2. 22:15 (AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angela takes the train back from London and becomes a not wholly unwilling pillow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a ChanceEncounter!AU ... because I'm a sucker for those. ;) ... sorry for errors, I didn't really do a read over haha...
> 
> (I'll try to space out uploads going forward, apologies for posting two in as many days.)

Angela is dead tired.

The lull of the train, which hovers over its rails and travels impossibly fast is reminiscent of the way it must have felt a hundred years ago, swaying in the wake of a wave which had traveled an immeasurably distance, just to be stopped by the hull of a dinky boat.

Outside the windows to her back and across from her, it is a dark, dark night. Neon lights blink advertisements into her retinas that stain her eyelids with highlighter color but go too fast to leave any sort of lasting impression. It’s not such a long ride from London back to Switzerland. Not what it had once been -- two trains and a lay over in Paris -- now the journey can be made in a couple hours. Can almost be considered a normal commute. In some ways, for Angela, it is.

She works at a lab in Zurich but her colleagues are based in London and once or twice a week, she travels to them to exchange notes on a project they collectively contribute to. It is exhausting. But if it is done, and done right, they will save the lives of thousands.

For Angela, the idea that they could succeed is enough.

She stifles a yawn into the back of her hand, as the train slows down at its next stop, checks her watch to read the time -- 22:15 (there are a few more stops along the way, but the one to Zurich should arrive around 23:30) -- and then slouches a bit further into her seat. Her eyes flicker down to the academic article currently pulled up on her tablet and she continues where she left off, reading about medical nanotech and a study on restructuring an  eye.

Angela becomes so absorbed in this article, in fact, that she does not notice when someone sits beside her.

And a little while later, she is startled out of her concentrated reading when something heavy falls on her shoulder.

 

* * *

 

Angela looks up, blinking owlishly. Across from her a child is grinning ear to ear, and Angela turns her head to her side to see what is happening.

There is a woman using her shoulder as a pillow.

Her mouth is open, and she is breathing out something which can almost be considered a snore. There is a tattoo under her right eye Angela vaguely thinks may be an Egyptian symbol. This theory is confirmed when Angela looks past the woman’s face (it’s a bit hard … she’s beautiful) and sees that she’s clutching a backpack in her lap. (Angela supposes she would probably be holding it in both arms, given how she half hunches protectively around it, but she finds, and is a bit surprised to find, that the woman's left arm ends just above the elbow - a carbon fiber prosthetic dock hiding most of the scar tissue.) The bag is a sandy color, worn, and a bit dirty, with a patch of Egypt’s flag and an embroidered name - Amari - on its front flap. Clearly a military bag.

And there is a story, likely complicated, likely a little sad, to this woman's life that Angela has no right to, but she wishes she could ask, none-the-less.

Sitting on this train, now, the world dark and quiet and the woman clad in a leather jacket and dark jeans, Angela feels a lot of things, but mostly she feels her face warm unhelpfully. She's never been a particularly touchy person, but something about this seems a bit surreal, seems a bit significant. Like it will be a defining moment, though Angela cannot begin to know why.

Unproductive, and a little embarrassed to be caught staring (the little girl is snickering now), Angela dutifully returns to her article.The words before her  blur and give no meaning, but Angela can feel the tug of her lips like a smile and she chuckles softly to herself, delighting stupidly in the way the woman shifts a bit and resettles.

It is ridiculous that something as simple as a stranger falling asleep on her shoulder on a long ride back to home could make her whole life seem meaningful. 

And Angela, childishly, half hopes the ride will never end.


	3. Day's End (AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fareeha helps Angela unwind after a long day at the hospital. (AU)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Given prompt. Very good prompt. Teeth rotting fluff. You are warned. ;)

Fareeha glances up from her book when she hears the bolt twist on the door.

It’s slow and methodical and smooth, which is the first sign that something is wrong. Usually, when Angela knows that Fareeha is on leave, the action is quicker and a little clumsy, which is funny in its own sort of way: the doctor’s hands are practiced; steady; perfect, except where Fareeha is concerned.

Fareeha dog ears the page. Her eyes flicker out the window of Angela’s apartment where it is still raining; has been raining all day, (the neon signs of the bar on the first floor reflect a bright, watery, blue light onto the window’s alcove) and then fall back on the door. It opens quietly, shuts quietly.

Fareeha watches Angela place her satchel on the floor, hang her coat on the rack; watches the way her tired eyes focus too intently on her shoes and removing them. Fareeha watches the water droplets of rain run down her cheek and neck, past the collar of her shirt and she swallows thickly.

“Hello,” says Angela, when all is done, and she flops gracelessly on the couch next to Fareeha. Fareeha sets her book down on the coffee table.

“Hello,” she echoes, and smiles, looping her pinky through her girlfriend’s she brings it to her lips and kisses it. “Rough day?”

Angela groans, her head drops to Fareeha’s shoulder.

“I was in surgery for nine hours,” Angela says, her voice muffled by the fabric of Fareeha’s shirt. Fareeha hums sympathetically. “I don’t know if the boy will make it. He is in ICU tonight.” For a long moment neither of them speak, and then Fareeha says softly:

“Children are strong-willed and stubborn." She feels for Angela, and knows how every death pains her. Fareeha turns to Angela then, gives her a sincere smile, her arm goes around her shoulder to bring her close and she says: “you are also a very, very good doctor.”

Angela graces her with a small smile, sits up a bit and kisses Fareeha soundly on the lips. Fareeha, who is a decorated solider with many accomplishments attached to her name still feels the burn of a blush at the tips of her ears and a cheeky grin flits across her mouth.

“Has anyone told you that you are wonderful?” Angela smiles, pulls back to look Fareeha in the eyes.

“Not without revoking it soon after,” Fareeha grins, devilishly and conspiratorially. Angela’s eyes narrow with suspicion and she sits even straighter.

“Whatever you’re thinking,” Angela warns, “do not.”

“Too late,” Fareeha says, and attacks. Her fingers dance across Angela’s ribcage, drawing out gasps and giggles and small kicks of protest as she falls back into the seat of the couch. Fareeha hovering over her, knees on either side of her hips.

“Fareeha!” Angela manages between fits of laughter, and attempts to hit her with a throw pillow. Fareeha ducks down to dodge it and quits tickling to press her lips flush against the fabric covering Angela’s stomach. Angela relaxes, her head lolls back in defeat. Fareeha lifts her shirt up to kiss her properly above the belly button. And then kisses her a few more times just because she can.

“You are so beautiful, I don’t know if I can _stomach_ it,” Fareeha says, turns her head so that she can listen to the sloshing sounds. Angela audibly groans.

“Please do not tell me all of that was so that you could make a pun.”

Angela looks down her body and Fareeha looks up it, grinning like the guilty; no remorse.

Angela grabs the throw pillow off the floor, hits Fareeha square in the face.

Fareeha is beautiful Angela thinks, with no real objective for the thought and no real point of origin. It just bubbles to her mind sometimes. Now. As she watches the way the woman below her grins, pushes the pillow away, wraps her arms - toned and tanned and scarred - around Angela’s back and presses deeper into her. The way her eyes close as she listens and the way she eases Angela’s mind.

Angela loves that she’s good. Better than most.

Angela blinks, stares hard at Fareeha.

“I’m hungry,” she says suddenly, propping herself up on her elbows. Fareeha opens her eyes, looks up to her, smiles.

“Okay,” she says, “I’ll make us dinner.”

“No, Fareeha, I’m _hungry_ ,” she says, smiles coyly, brings her leg up and wraps it around Fareeha’s back.

“Oh,” says Fareeha, lamely. A pause, a moment of understanding, and then with a bit more gusto: “ _oh!_ ”

And when Fareeha moves up to kiss Angela again on the lips it’s a bit more … well, everything, really. And the day seems to melt away.


	4. Thoughts Which Consume

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fareeha wakes up after a dream and Angela talks her down from some worrying thoughts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter Fareeha helped out Angela, so now here's Angela returning the favor. Also: References to Greek mythology, apparently that's my thing.

Fareeha dreams she is engulfed in the feathers of an infinite falcon, the color of a sunset burning the middle horizon; it is so bright. So bright, and horrifying and then it is dark, luminescent like the moon in the night - and then it _is_ night.

Fareeha blinks, her eyes focusing in the half light, and turns to stare out the window which the head of her bed is pressed up against. 

It’s snowing, it’s always snowing up north. And she is always cold. The other’s tell her sleeping away from the window will help, but it feels like such a shame to shut herself off from the world like that. 

Fareeha breaths low on the glass until it fogs, runs her finger through the precipitation; draws a cat, smiling.

She has the same dreams: they are reruns of themselves, airing in cycles. The bird reminds her of Horus, whom she learned about as a child in her history lessons, for whom she wears his symbol of protection. 

If she fails, she fails herself, she fails a thousand people, her mother, and a god. 

It feels substantial. At times, she feels like Atlas, like the world is baring down on her as punishment for failing; to be a good daughter, a good solider, a good leader or lover.

At times, she feels like a poor imitation of a proper agent of protection, like her mother was - is. She lives in the light and in the dark, between gray uncertainty and still finds justice for the innocent. For the good people. Of course, there are still good people. Fareeha tries to imitate that, but is not as good. She has vices which feel like hooks in her back connected to lead weights. Always stopping her from going too fast, too far, lest they rip the flesh which anchors them. 

Fareeha groans, falls back, stares at the ceiling above her. 

“I can hear you thinking,” grumbles Angela. Fareeha blinks and looks at the woman to her right, buried in blankets. Angela moves her arm to drape it over Fareeha’s stomach, squeezes briefly and then relaxes, but does not open her eyes. Fareeha turns back to the ceiling. 

“I had a dream,” she says simply. 

“A bad one?” Angela replies, her voice thick with sleep. 

“No,” responds Fareeha, “just a frightening one.” 

Angela retracts her arm, turns on her side to rest on her elbow, her chin in the palm of her hand, waiting for an elaboration. 

Fareeha wants to respond, but Angela’s hair is going twelve different directions, and her skin is paler than usual from having spent almost two solid days in a dingy lab, and she is tired. If she weren’t such a light sleeper, she wouldn’t be awake for another day. 

“I have a job,” says Fareeha, finally. “If I do my job well, good people help good people who help good people who are all better than me.” Fareeha breaths out. “I do not think I am the right person for my job.” 

For a long moment, neither of them speak, and then Angela moves a stray hair from out of Fareeha’s face, leans down and kisses her on the cheek. 

“Because you do not think you are a good enough person to protect those people?”

“Because I am surrounded by many people who are better at protecting those people.”

Angela hums.

“Despite what you may think,” she says, “you do more than most; you deserve to think of yourself as others think of you.” 

Fareeha chuckles and it’s a bit watery and full of emotions she does not share in the daylight.

“I’m not like you, or Winston or even my mother,” Fareeha says, and it’s half said through constricted windpipes. “I’ll never resurrect the dead,” 

“No,” Angela agrees, “but you have kept others from dying, and that made a difference to them.” Fareeha hums. Angela watches her for a moment, and then lays back down. “You are important to Overwatch, Fareeha, and you are important to me; I half wish that that would be enough. Of course, though, it’s not. You would be no less of a magnificent woman if we had never met, if you had never joined Overwatch. You are important.” 

Fareeha looks back at her, grins even though Angela’s eyes are closed again and she cannot see it.

“You are amazing, did you know that?”

“I have two doctorates that tell me something like that,” Angela mutters, but her mouth lift up into a small smile anyway. “But I like the way it sounds coming from your lips.”

Fareeha smiles, wraps an arm around her, pulls her close against her. 

“The next time I wake up, there should be coffee somewhere near by,” Angela says, grumpily.

“Okay,” Fareeha chuckles.


	5. In the Morning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just some very mildly nsfw fluff. From a prompt. For your reading pleasure. :]

It's Fareeha who wakes up first. It's always Fareeha who wake up first; something about the regiment, she tells Angela, is stabilizing. It puts her in a good frame of mind and she likes to wake up in a good frame of mind.

Angela isn't quite like that. If she's not on call, not on active duty, not following someone else's schedule, Angela could sleep for ages. Has done so before.

Fareeha spends a long time doing nothing particularly. She's on her stomach, one arm thrown over Angela's midriff the other under her chin. She's breathing in the remnants of Angela's mint-tinged shampoo (clinging desperately to the pillowcase), listening to a bird outside and thinking idly about the mission she's been assigned to on Monday. And then her mind wanders, or perhaps her mind returns, and she looks at Angela - wearing only a sheet, so still she looks frozen in time, glowing in the thin light of the sun through the blinds.

She's beautiful, thinks Fareeha, uninhibited, and lingers for a moment.

Then, because Fareeha is restless and has always been that way, she grins, puffing out a breath of air which moves the loose hair around Angela's face. Angela sighs, shifts, her eyes flutter open briefly, and then closed quick against the rays of the rising sun and her whole face scrunches up.

"What time is it?" She half mutters, rolls over, finds Fareeha's shoulder and buries her face there. Fareeha looks at the alarm clock on Angela's nightside table.

"06:00," she says, softly. Angela groans. "Tired?"

"I was up very late," Angela says, her voice groggy but light. She's moved her hand against Fareeha's ribcage, her thumb tracing idle patters on the skin there.

"I know," says Fareeha, "I was there." Angela laughs softly and pulls back briefly to look at her. Her eyes are wide and remarkably blue and her lips are pulled into something like a secretive smile Fareeha doesn't immediately know how to make sense of. But then, Fareeha is on her back, Angela's hand firm on her shoulder, her legs on either side of her hips, straddling her. Whatever drowsiness had been on her face is gone now, replaced with a smirk; small and teasing. Fareeha grins up at her, lets her hands rest on Angela's calves.

"Were you? I felt like I was doing most of the work," Angela laughs and bends down to kiss Fareeha's neck. The skin is sensitive and when Angela withdraws to look at her again, she is blushing, barely, which is as much an indicator as Fareeha needs to tell her there are bruises.

"Yes, well, you get very huffy when I interfere," Fareeha says and brings her hand up to the bite marks, rubbing them softly.

Angela moves her hips forward slowly, grinding against the hard muscle below Fareeha's belly button; skin against skin, and both of them let out a gasp.

Fareeha, who desperately wishes she wasn't this way, blushes despite her best efforts and her entire body buzzes under Angela.

"I'll try to be better this time," Angela says.

"No you won't," Fareeha chuckles. There's a brief moment of silence, Angela's watching her carefully, smiling; Fareeha feels very warm and very wanted and very loved, all in one glance.

"No," Angela finally agrees, "I won't," and then she leans down and Fareeha's all caught up again in her.

* * *

 

"How can you be such an awful cook and yet never burn a pancake?" Fareeha chuckles, handing a plate to Angela.

Angela's wearing her sweatpants, they're a bit big and rest low on her hips. Although, Fareeha's wearing Angela's shirt, a white button down that can't be fully buttoned; so maybe it's just as well.

"I am not an awful cook," says Angela, stacking the pancakes on the plate. There's a red mark on her forearm, Fareeha's retaliation for the many on her neck and stomach, that Fareeha spends a moment looking at.

"Our friends do not come to meals when you are scheduled to cook," Fareeha says reasonably, Angela rolls her eyes. "It is a mass eggs-odus, Angela."

"I cannot believe I have sex with you," Angela groans, but leans up to kiss Fareeha even as she says it.

"It is so that I will cook for you," Fareeha laughs into her lips. Angela pulls back just a hair, pouts. It's the most adorable thing Fareeha thinks she's ever seen.

"I am not a bad cook," she reiterates with slightly more feeling. Fareeha hums dismissively and kisses her again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to drop a comment or kudo. More to come!


	6. A Happy New Year

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angela doesn't get a break, even on holidays ... but she does get a kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Late uploads? Me? Preposterous! (Does anyone ever say preposterous anymore...?)

“It’s good fortune to kiss someone at the start of the New Year,” Hana says, idly, her legs draped over Fareeha’s thighs. She’s playing on some handheld game console, her eyes glued to it. Across the room, Lúcio is also playing, his shoulders hunched over, his brow creased in concentration. Fareeha knows they are playing each other, and although she’s not a gambler, she has a pretty good idea of who she would bet on if she were.   
   
Fareeha hums, turns the page in her book, and wills herself to give nothing away. After all, Hana is perceptive and intuitive and relentless. She looks up from her game, flashes Fareeha a grin which is deceptively sweet.   
   
“I felt your legs tense up,” she says, conversationally. “Bet I can guess who you thought about.”   
   
“I would rather you not,” Fareeha says her voice passive and even. They’re watching each other; waiting for the other to crack.   
   
Hana, who has the patience of a small child in a mall, gives in first, groans, falls back; Fareeha smirks.   
   
“Let me help youuu,” she whines.   
   
“I am okay, Hana,” Fareeha tells her, “I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I am capable of acting of my own volition.”   
   
It’s a sweet gesture; it really is, on Hana’s part, to try to assist. But Hana doesn’t take life in half measure, and she doesn’t slow down, and although she’s good intentioned, her methods don’t agree with Fareeha’s style … or Angela’s reservations.  Because here’s the truly unfair fact of life: Dr. Angela Ziegler has a mission, an idea, an aspiration, and although they flit around each other, stealing moments and laughs and soft smiles, Fareeha doesn’t fit into her plan, and Angela … Angela has brought the dead back to life for that plan.   
   
“Could have fooled me,” Hana grumbles. Fareeha chuckles softly.  
   
“ _ **How** **?**_ ” Lúcio suddenly shouts; his head whipping up from the tiny screen he’d been so intently focused on. Hana turns away from Fareeha to flash him a winsome smirk. “You weren’t even paying attention! … Thought for sure I’d win that time,” and then he deflates into his chair, the game system dangling from his hand.  
   
“Get good,” Hana grins, focuses back on her screen. Lúcio, with utter indignation throws his hand in a wide sweeping gesture over the entirety of Hana’s body. Fareeha laughs, turns back to her book.  
   
“I am sure you are very good,” she tells him, soothingly.    
   
“So good,” Lúcio half mutters, half defends, sinking further into the chair.

 

* * *

 

The entire affair of New Years is a bit more of an ordeal than Fareeha had originally expected it to be.

Part of this is because Mei is very excited, as are the Shimada siblings and, oddly, Jack - who has spent the entire evening fluxing between bittersweet stories about Indiana and how he used to sit in front of a small TV with his folks waiting on a ball of glittering lights to drop halfway across the country. There’s something like an ache in his tone and Fareeha has never seen him drink before, but tonight he does.

The junkers are also up to no good.

Any holiday which involves explosives is one Jamison takes interest in; Fareeha is not particularly surprised. Though when Jamison walks past her carrying a create of gun powder and Mako grunts a greeting carrying two more, she thinks maybe she might run by Angela’s and let her know that situations could get complicated tonight.

Angela hasn't been present for any of the festivities taking place in the communal area. Fareeha's not entirely sure why. If she's been looking for an excuse to drop by the doctor's lab, that's her business.  

It’s 23:34 when Fareeha knocks lightly on the frame of the door to Angela’s lab. It’s open and Angela is looking studiously into the swirling center of a mug of what is probably coffee. She looks ... utterly exhausted. 

“May I?” Fareeha says, grabbing her attention. Angela looks to her, smiles vaguely and nods. “Are you alright?” Fareeha asks, she pulls up a spare rolling chair, turns it around and straddles it, her arms folded over the chair’s back.

She does this because Angela’s eyes flicker to her forearms briefly, then a little lower, and Fareeha blushes with a hidden pleasure and prays it doesn’t show.

“Yes,” Angela says, “it’s just been a long day.” Fareeha laughs sheepishly, rubs her neck absently.

“I'm sorry to be the one to tell you - it might be about to get a bit longer,” she says, and points out the med-bay window. The junkers are out there, in the snow, grinning like madmen, which is fitting, and stringing fuses together.

Angela looks out to them. It takes a moment for her mind to process what is happening - Fareeha watches the thought process flit across her face - and then she slams a hand on her desk; stands so quickly and with such force that her swivel chair falls over.

“Oh no,” she growls, her eyes narrowing. She looks like a goddess, in some ways; she looks ethereal and hellbent and Fareeha might have said something, might have stared a bit longer at what passion can manifest itself into, but Angela is storming towards the exit in a huff of indignation and Fareeha doesn’t really do anything except blink dumbly for a moment and then rush after her.

They pass Hana in the hallway; presumably the younger girl is heading to the communal living room, to get back to the party. She’s carrying what is probably a bottle of soju, and a computer to stream (this is something she does every year, she tells them, even though Winston is adamant that it not be done while she’s working with an unsanctioned ‘rebel’ group).

“What are the lovebirds up to?” Hana smiles, innocent and deviant. Fareeha gives her a disapproving look and Angela, though her cheeks tinge just a bit, is not deterred.

“Not now, Hana,” she says kindly, firmly, almost motherly, and does not stop. Hana balks.

“What’s wrong with her?”

“Junkrat is about to light up the night sky … though I think Angela may be the one that explodes.” Fareeha says. Hana blinks.

“Oooooooooooh,” she grins.

“Hana,” Fareeha says seriously, “whatever thought just popped into your head, put it out.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hana winks, turns tail and is gone. Fareeha sighs tiredly, and jogs to catch up with Angela.

 

* * *

 

“I will not be patching you two up when you blow off your remaining limbs!” Angela all but yells, throwing open the doors to the courtyard. Junkrat’s entire head pops up as he turns, like a meerkat. Mako doesn’t move much, but he does step back - just barely, almost unnoticeable. Fareeha closes the doors sensibly, and stands an appropriate distance behind Angela as she stalks towards the junkers, her hair glowing like a halo under the lamp lights.

“Oi, no worries, doc, I done this a thousand times!” Junkrat beams. “Jus' rig up this here and - KABOOM! Got ourselves the best show outside the outback!”

“Absolutely not,” Angela says.

“Absolutely not,” Fareeha echoes.

“Wa?” Junkrat says, blinks at them, looks down at his wrist. There’s a an Overwatch watch placed there - one of those cheap toy-like watches which come in boxes of cereal. He looks at it hard, and then throws his wrist in Roadhog’s face.

“Oi Roadie, what’s it say?”

Roadhog looks at it briefly.

“23:56,” he grunts. Junkrat turns to Angela, grins sheepishly, but with absolutely no guilt.

“Wish I could carry on, do love these chats, doc, but times tick-tockin' away and I got some stuff to blow up.”

Angela looks thoroughly pissed off, which is not something Fareeha thinks she’s ever seen.

“You’ll do no such thing,” she says, steps forward - is distracted.

The doors open behind Fareeha, she turns, and then moves slightly out of the way of the exiting mass. The whole based team pours out, lead by one Hana Song, followed closely behind by Lúcio, Winston, everyone.

“An audience,” cheers Junkrat, turns to Roadhog, “get me that match!” Roadhog lights a match, gives it to Jamison, who moves to light the fuse.

“Don’t do it,” Angela growls. He stops, looks at it.

“Do it!” Hana yells, she’s holding her computer and it is open. Fareeha looks at the screen, can see a chat window on the right side of commenters echoing Hana’s sentiments. When Fareeha’s face fills the screen, the conversation switches to her and she quickly withdraws, not wanting to be part of it.

“Don’t,” Angela says again, firm.

Junkrat looks between her and Hana, sees Jack lunging for him, presumably to halt the chaos. Hanzo's sighing dramatically, Jesse’s  giving a thumbs up by the door. Junkrat turns, lights the fuse. 

The explosion is everything Fareeha thought it might be: big, loud, it blows Junkrat into Roadhog into the snow and Fareeha makes it in just enough time to pull Angela out of the blast zone.

The fireworks which follow are, admittedly, beautiful. 

The whole team, excluding Jack, Angela and Fareeha, cheers as they light up the night sky. Fareeha is still holding Angela semi-protected against her chest as she watches them and Angela is sighing in defeat, her fingers digging into Fareeha’s forearms.

“Just one quiet night,” she’s muttering, “that is all I wanted.”

“It may never happen,” Fareeha responds, apologetically. She knows she should let go, knows that Angela is tired and stressed and always a little on edge and always a little distant.

“It’s midnight!” yells Jesse behind them, with a hoot, and fires his gun. Fareeha can’t see it, but she would not be surprised if he’d thrown his hat.

“...Do you have a New Years resolution?” Fareeha asks, and finally drops her arms, surprised when Angela does not back away. Above them the fireworks are intensifying and vaguely, Fareeha thinks it’s everything she wanted from this evening, explosion and all.

“I want to relax more,” Angela tells her, and then looks at her strangely, “...possibly with you.”

Fareeha feels the heat in her arms.

When Angela kisses her it is not what Fareeha is expecting, because it is different from the relationship she’s come to know with the doctor, and because it is more urgent than kisses they have shared before, more fiery, more, more, and Fareeha wants more of it, but Angela pulls away and breathes before Fareeha can think for herself again.

“A kiss at midnight is good fortune,” Angela says, softly, tiredly but with a smile.

“I have heard,” Fareeha breathes.

“I think we could all use a little good fortune.”

 

* * *

 

 

"My fans really liked the stream last night..." Hana says. Back on the couch, back at her game, legs thrown over Fareeha's thighs. Fareeha buries her head deeper in her book and makes no comment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments are always appreciated. <3


	7. Bad Knees

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two chapters in one day ... except this is like 200 words, so it doesn't really count haha.

She’s trying to be impressive, Angela knows. The entirety of Overwatch knows. The kid across the street with his phone out recording the whole ordeal of their finished mission probably knows, too.

Pharah comes down hard on her left knee, her right hand bracing the impact, Angela is mentally cataloging where the stress is most prominent on which muscles and bones. An image flashing in her mind of the skeletal system with little red highlights where a fracture is not only possible, but also entirely likely. Another part of Angela’s mind is traitorously aware of the flex of muscle in Fareeha’s forearm, the way her skin pulls tight around them, and how that makes Angela’s stomach turn pleasantly.

Pharah doesn’t care, she lifts her head up, under the helmet, little is visible but pearly whites exposed by a cheeky grin. Fareeha is chuckling, Angela realizes, and looking directly at her.

At least the kid across the street is clearly impressed by the display. Angela is slightly less impressed. 

“You do realize that doing a hero landing like that is really hard on your knees,” Angela says flatly.

Fareeha seems to physically deflate. Angela strides over to her, lowers herself to her ear and says, with every intent of sounding as seductive as she does:

“I hope you know a good doctor.”

Fareeha’s cheeks bloom burgundy and Angela suspects if she could see her eyes they would be blown wide with dilation.

“As a matter of fact -” Fareeha says, or is in the process of saying, when Angela brings her lips on Fareeha’s and kisses any remaining air out of her lungs.


	8. Vacation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angela kidnaps Fareeha for a much needed break. And is cheeky, no surprise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would just like to point out that at the time of posting this, this story had 2320 hits and 232 kudos, which for anyone as obsessed with their story statistics as I am, means that for each ten views I've been receiving a kudo. 
> 
> Which is just, so cool, y'all. Like that kind of consistency? Rare. That's my ideal ratio, and it usually tends to drop as chapters are added (which is totally understandable for a number of reasons and honestly I could write an entire essay about how stupid obsessed I get with my hits to kudos to comments correlations but I'm not going to because no one wants to read through literal paragraphs about that kind of thing...)
> 
> What I'm getting at here is: THANK YOU! For enjoying pharmercy fluff and these mundane little ficlets as much as I enjoy writing them.
> 
> And now back to the stories!

“Angela, I’m sorry -” says Fareeha, already halfway into her armor; already mentally halfway across the world. Angela frowns but she's not mad, could never really be. 

Angela wishes however, that Winston would stop assigning Fareeha to every mission that comes in. Of the last thirty, Fareeha had been on twenty-eight of the teams deployed.

Angela has only been on ten.

They have dinner plans. _Had_ anyway. Angela sighs, tries not to come off as too disappointed. This is not something either of them control.

"It’s because I’m expendable," Fareeha tells her, half joking. Because Fareeha is not capable of bringing people back from the dead, is not a social revolutionist, is not a famous video gamer or even a reformed hard-light architect genius. There is a tinge of something bitter and self-deprecative that Angela hears, that Fareeha tastes on her tongue. That neither of them is pleased about. 

“It is because you are the best leader,” says Angela, firm, and kisses her on the cheek. “Please be safe.” Fareeha smiles, and Angela hopes she believes what she says, the same way Angela means it when she says it. She is always very sure of what she says and what she means where Fareeha is concerned.

“Of course.” Fareeha replies, and walks out towards the hangers.

Fareeha is cut from a different cloth than most of the Overwatch agents now. She is military, through and through, but she is also _good._ Better than most. She is a voice of reason, a solid ground. She is a lot of things Angela, Mei, Winston, 76, even _Ana_ will never be. Too kind to be here, too proficient to be anywhere else. Too hesitant. Too sure.

Angela rubs the bridge of her nose. They both need a vacation from this place.

 

* * *

 

“Are you sure?” Fareeha presses, weary, watching Athena reroute her ship - she had left after the rest of the team, tending to the displaced residents of an apartment complex caught in the crossfires of their fight with Talon. It’d taken a few days, but the building had been deemed habitable again, loss of possession was minimal. Around the winter season, that was its own sort of reward.

“It’ll be fine,” Jesse responds, his words spoken around a cigar. “Angela says she’ll fill you in when you get there.”

“Alright,” Fareeha sighs, “I was … just hoping I could talk to Winston about having a few days off,” she says, “I have not had much down time.”

“Ain’t'cha worry none about that ‘manita,” Jesse drawls, “you finish up this mission and I’ll have a couple words with Winston about givin’ you a break.” Fareeha smiles to herself, shakes her head a bit.

“Thank you,” she says - hears a chuckle - and then the line goes cold. Fareeha falls into her chair as the autopilot reroutes her to Switzerland.

_One more mission_ , she thinks, tired. _At least Angela is on this one._

 

* * *

 

So Angela has told a little white lie.

Fareeha exits the plane (a smaller model, generally used to escape detection) in a town called Interlaken and it is so cold Fareeha takes two steps out and immediately backtracks back into the convoy. From the warmth of the ship she radios Mercy.

“I’ve arrived,” she says over the comms, “where is the rendezvous location?”

“Stay there,” Angela replies, “I’m on my way!”

And so Fareeha waits, the ship secluded in the mountains, draws no notice - but Fareeha, who is not accustomed to cold whether, half wishes there were somewhere else to go. Even with the engines on, the cabin is fairly cold. 

Thirty minutes later, Angela arrives, knocks on the hatch.

Fareeha opens the door, and is only half surprised to see Angela in normal clothes (relatively, she’s dressed for the cold, a bomber jacket and ear muffs and gloves.) Fareeha lets her in, watches her set down some spare clothing on a vacant transport create.

“Angela,” says Fareeha, skeptical. Angela hums pleasantly. “Have I missed something?”

“No,” Angela says.

“Is this not a mission?”

Angela smirks, a devilish twitch of the lips that makes Fareeha warm inside.

“Technically?” Angela replies. "Yes." She lets a moment rest between them. “Although … I may have stretched the truth a bit when briefing Winston …”

“Oh?” Fareeha responds, inspects the clothes. There’s another jacket, ear muffs, a hat, mittens, ski overalls and some very fluffy socks - they have cats on them.

“We should agree not to think too much about propriety,” Angela says. “I want to take you skiing.” Fareeha raises an eyebrow.

“Skiing?” She asks. Angela nods.

“It use to be one of my favorite hobbies ... And we have had hardly any downtime," Angela is earnest in the way she stares at Fareeha. Part of it is etched in determination, another in sincere imploring. "So with this orchestrated holiday, I wanted to take you skiing.”

“In some countries,” Fareeha grins, “this could be considered kidnapping.”

Angela rolls her eyes fondly, pats the clothing.

“Get dressed,” she replies. Fareeha chuckles.

“If you ins _ice_ t.”

Angela groans, brings a hand to her head, and Fareeha can feel no remorse.

 

* * *

 

 

Angela, who is fully taking advantage of her vacation, does not once look away as Fareeha strips of her light travel wear, replacing it with the winter wear.

 

* * *

 

Two hours later finds Angela and Fareeha at the tops of a wintery slope, a room reserved for them at the lodge down the mountain. Fareeha, who is wearing three coats, two shirts, a pair of pants and some thermal underwear, is still cold ... and also very unsure of everything.

“It is fun!” Angela assures her, looking for all the world like a skiing protege - which would not surprise Fareeha in the least. She has yet to see Angela preform any task she hadn’t already excelled in.

The closest Fareeha has come to skiing is riding trashcan lids down sand dunes when she was just a girl. It had been fun. Loads of fun. But not anything quite like this. Not least of all because even then, Fareeha was falling out of the lids and being run over by her friends. She still has a scar on her forehead.

“What do I do?” Fareeha asks. At this point, she is mostly humoring Angela - who is clearly very excited to be in her home country, skiing, (teaching her not-quite-girlfriend to ski) reconnecting with winter. Fareeha is an avid listener and lover and so she takes this all in stride. The skiing is, admittedly, not what makes the trip for her. 

(Fareeha has only ever wanted to see Angela smile; they both work far too much. Fareeha for Egypt, with Overwatch, feels burdened by promises she has made to both of them. But Angela hardly leaves her lab, hardly thinks about anything other than minimizing casualties and thinking of the errors she has made. This is good for both of them, thinks Fareeha, staring down the edge of a very steep mountain. This will do them good.)

“Use the sticks to steer - bring the skis together to stop, separate to go faster, okay?” Angela says, smiles. Fareeha tries to smile back but her lips are chapped so it comes out all wrong; she nods.

Angela goes first. She makes it look effortless. Like cutting through water.

Fareeha goes next, gets a few meters and falls on her ass.

This happens several times.

For all Angela is a wonderful learner, endlessly smart, very perceptive - she is an awful teacher. Fareeha breaths deeply in frustration as Angela tells her “ _you just have to do it-_ ” which is absolutely no help.

Thirty minutes and almost no forward momentum later, Fareeha stops the beautiful woman with a despondent look. 

“Angela,” she pleads, “is there a class? A ski class? That I can take...”

Angela frowns and it’s adorable but Fareeha’s ass is sore and she’s pretty sure she hates skiing.

“You can do this...” she sighs, though she sounds less sure of the fact than Fareeha feels.

“All the same,” Fareeha says.

 

* * *

 

Angela, standing outside the barrier of where the skiing class is taking place on an isolated acre of the mountain, laughs quietly into her gloves.

_“Pizza to stop,”_ the ski instructor smiles, her eyes too bright, her voice too high. She brings the tips of her skis together in demonstration. Fareeha, determined in all aspects of her life, brings her skis together in imitation.

So do the twelve children taking the class alongside her.

_“French fries to go,”_ says the instructor, her skis now parallel. Fareeha mimics. The twelve children also mimic.

Fareeha, who excels in training and being the best and the brightest, follows studiously. It is the most adorable thing Angela thinks that she has ever seen.

Fareeha turns to Angela as she moves her skis back into pizza formation. Angela plays the part of a supportive girlfriend. 

_“You owe me,”_ she mouths.

Angela grins, devilishly and inappropriately; brings her fingers to her mouth in a V shape and flicks her tongue out.

Fareeha blushes so deep the red tinge is visible even from Angela’s distance and that is enough to convince Angela that Fareeha will become an excellent skier, and their vacation will be a very good one. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be honest, Angela alluding to going down on Fareeha is probably the best thing I've ever written.
> 
> Also, I think I might need to change the rating to T...


	9. An Interesting Start

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fareeha's on her first mission: recon with Angela. There's only one bed at the motel their holed up in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on a tumblr prompt: "It's only one night, we'll just share the bed"
> 
> People are great an I love them. :3 And I think this is one of the ficlets I've most enjoyed writing in the past month or so, which is why I'm uploading it literally the day after it was posted on tumblr. (Which is not something I usually have the motivation to do ^^; )
> 
> Enjoy!

There’s a lot Fareeha’s expecting from Overwatch when she answers the recall (her mother’s recall, in fact, extended to her in Ana’s absence. In one regard, it feels like an honor, in another it feels like an insult). She expects a regimented, orderly organization, unsanctioned but stable. She expects to be a junior member among legends. She expects to not talk much, because she is an outsider or because there isn’t much she can say of herself that someone wouldn’t already know or assume or guess at.

What she gets is a mess headed by a gorilla with a brilliant mind but remarkable unsure of himself. So unsure, it turns out, that not even a hyper logical AI program can balance him out. She also gets the impression that she is someone with an extensive amount of tactical experience over her peers - even the ones previously in Overwatch.

What she gets is a lot of conversation. It starts with Lena Oxton, a spunky Brit who needs to be acknowledged. She also talks with Lúcio about politics and revolution, talks to Hana about retro games (Fareeha’s a closeted nerd and decent competition … for someone who doesn’t play video games at the professional level). She talks to Reinhardt about her childhood hero worship and asks him too many questions about her mother because she can.

She talks to Angela.

She talks to Angela a lot, actually. After workouts and before dinner and unsubtly she drops by the medbay on the regular with half baked excuses for conversation.

She tries to bring coffee during these unexpected visits, to lessen the annoyance of them. At least if there’s coffee, Fareeha reasons, she is technically serving a purpose.

After a few months, it all feels fairly routine. Fareeha has settled into the odd squad, has become an asset in the war room, is trying very hard to be as useful as her mother had been, all those years ago.

Fareeha’s walking to the shooting range when Winston stop her in the hallway. He looks frazzled.

“Pharah!” He says, kindly, jittery. Fareeha graces him with a salute. She has not figured out if this makes him uncomfortable, but Fareeha is a military woman and Winston is technically a superior - if only in an informal sort of way.

“Hello Winston,” she says.

“I meant to catch you,” he says, “I have a mission for you.”

It is the first mission Fareeha has been assigned.

 

* * *

 

Fareeha bumps shoulder to shoulder down the motel walk way with Angela - Mercy. It’s getting late and they’ll technically begin their mission tomorrow, but at least they’ve made it to their base of operation.

Fareeha feels oddly exposed in her leather jacket and jeans, without the comfort of Raptora. The pistol strapped to her ankle seems inconsequential when she has spent so much of her time wielding a rocket launcher.

To make matters worse (or perhaps better), Angela - Mercy is wearing a crop top, her midriff exposed, and Fareeha is reminded that she is very, very attracted to the medic.

She sighs, runs a hand over her neck and refocuses.

“Recon is not something I have done much,” she says idly, to distract herself mostly. “I have never been very … subtle.” Angela looks at her and flashes a smile, she looks mischievous for a moment, like she might say something, and then seems to reconsider. When next she speaks, it’s neutral ground.

“Lucky you that I have experience in this area,” Angela says. Fareeha chuckles.

“I am surprised, truthfully.”

“Collecting information, no matter the subject, can usually be done in the same general ways. As an academic, a pseudo politician and an aid activist, I have utilized most of them.”

“You seem to have experience in … a lot of areas,” Fareeha says, surprised. Angela smirks and Fareeha is not sure, cannot be sure, but she swears the other woman winked.

“More than you know.”

Fareeha chuckles to cover up the feeling that she has missed something important.

They make it to their motel room and Angela slides the card key in and opens the door.

It’s small, Fareeha has never stayed in a motel before - they’re not hugely prevalent outside of Australia and the Americas - so she’s not sure what she was expecting. What she gets is a single full-sized bed, a couch with the foam of one cushion sticking out, and a box tv … which were already outdated by the time her mother was born so she’s more curious as to where this one was found than why it exists at all.

Fareeha sets her duffle down next to the door and looks around, confused.

“I guess Winston forgot to specify two beds,” she says.

“Seems that way,” replies Angela, setting her own bag down on a chair. She digs through it for a moment and produces a sheet and a throw blanket.

“What is that?” Fareeha asks, curiously.

“Clean linens. I have read too many studies on body fluids to care to know what these sheets have been through.”

Fareeha snorts and tries not to think about it.

“I will take the couch,” Fareeha tells her, digging in her own bad for sleep wear.

“Fareeha,” Angela says, almost fondly almost exasperated. Fareeha shrugs sheepishly, “we’ll share the bed,” Angela tells her, with a note of finality, “it is only one night.”

“Are you sure?” Fareeha says.

“Absolutely,” Angela tells her.

So they change, and out of her jacket and jeans, into her sweats and tank top, lying next to Angela, Fareeha feels infinitely more exposed than she had earlier.

It’s not that it’s awkward, Fareeha has slept in cots with squad mates, has slept on floors with friends and has slept meters away from the dead - hating war and fighting and herself in particular.

It’s just that in the months Fareeha has been with Overwatch, has come to truly know Angela (more then passing glances as a child), she finds herself wondering things neither of them have the luxury of entertaining. So she feels foolish, lying next to Angela, thinking about her thighs, exposed by shorts too short, the way her shirt rides up, how her hair looks when it’s down. She feels foolish for having her sense overwhelmed by the minty smell of Angela’s shampoo, or lotion, or whatever it may be that seems to linger around her body and in every fiber of the sheets and blanket they are using. When she feels like she cannot take it anymore, she falls back on a game they’ve been playing: a never ending round of twenty questions.

“Angela,” she ventures, Angela hums - she’s reading, her side of the bed’s lamp is on, she’s wearing glass - it’s doing something to Fareeha she has words for, but won’t give voice to. “Why did you answer the recall.”

Angela looks up from her book, looks directly at Fareeha; amber and blue.

“I believe the best way to achieve my goal is to lend my knowledge to those which fight the source of its problems,” she says, eventually. “Although, I sometimes think the places I am needed to most are the ones which have been exposed to the effect the longest.” Fareeha hums.

“There are no easy paths,” Fareeha half says. Angela closes her book, sets it on her nightstand.

“No,” she agrees. Fareeha hazards a look at her and immediately regrets it, Angela is striking even in lamp light and it is truly unfair.

Angela must see something in her eyes because she smirks lightly.

“What are you thinking?” She asks, innocently, but the answer is not innocent and so Fareeha looks back towards the ceiling and feigns calm.

“I was thinking about our mission objectives,” she lies, “the list is in my bag.”

“Oh?” Angela says, there’s a teasing lift to it. “Do lists excite you?” Fareeha blinks, looks back to Angela.

“What?” She says, stupefied. Angela bites her lip, Fareeha’s head fills with more thoughts, Angela smiles again.

“You know, when something is pleasing, exciting, the eyes tend to dilate.” She says, reasonably and Fareeha stills.

Angela sits up, crawls over Fareeha so that she straddles her.

Fareeha feels as though the has been exposed, in several ways, and she can’t even muster the emotion to be indignant about it.

The development is nice. The weight of Angela on her abdomen is nicer still, the way heat rests in her stomach just below the junction of Angela’s thighs on her skin is perhaps nicest of all.

“There it is,” Angela tells her, looking her directly in the eye. Fareeha has the distinct impression Angela has been monitoring her.

Angela leans down, presses her lips to Fareeha’s neck, where her heartbeat is pulsing erratically below the surface. Angela smiles into the kiss, chaste as it is, and smiles a little more when Fareeha swallows.

“How long have you known?” Fareeha chuckles, throws her arm over her eyes to hide herself from Angela’s clearly too perceptive gaze.

“I had suspicions after your second visit to my office,” Angela replies. “…You are not very subtle,” she laughs lightly, echoing Fareeha’s own words.

“I am sorry,” Fareeha tells her, feeling a little aroused and a little ashamed at being caught.

“I would have told you if it was unwanted,” Angela tells her. Fareeha peeks from under her arm and Angela is close, her face bright, her hair glowing in the half-light, Fareeha feels spellbound. Perhaps Angela is a witch and that is why there is such an effect. “… Can I?” Angela asks, leans in. Fareeha chuckles, nods, accepts this kiss in all its finite glory.

Accepts the way Angela hips grind into her stomach, lighting the skin there on fire through even the cloth and eliciting a groan. Accepts the way Angela lingers on the kiss, enjoys it, her forearm supporting her weight, idly toying with Fareeha's hair. Accepts Angela's other hand as it goes to her chest, playing at the most sensitive skin there until Fareeha feels lightheaded and hyper-aware.

Fareeha accepts everything that comes and gives in equal measure in every enticing blissful second of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos are always appreciated!


	10. Miss and Mistake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They fight; they make up. The nature of things will always be this: forgiveness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another prompt fulfillment.
> 
> It's strange, some of the things I'm most proud of writing don't go over well in the initial posting. Although, I know for a fact that the Pharmercy fandom prefers fluff (I do, too. I almost never go looking for angst ;). All that aside, I was pretty proud of this one.
> 
> So please enjoy! (Nothing too sad, just a fight and some reflection.) 
> 
>  
> 
> ** Fahr zur Hölle - Go to the hell. (Thanks to Cibo for the translation :3)

The clouds are low hanging on the horizon; they look like red mountains. Fareeha is gazing at them idly, imagining climbing a red mountain. What that must feel like.

Fareeha is set to be deployed in less than a day.

“You could have said no,” Angela says, her voice cool and distant. Fareeha fiddles with a loose screw on her prosthetic. It needs to be fixed - soon. 

“Yes,” she replies.

Angela will not make her feel bad about this. _Will not._

“You were advised against going, even,” Angela bites. There is a steeliness to her tone which cuts Fareeha to the bone. Fareeha does not want to fight, not like this.

“She nearly murdered my mother,” Fareeha tells her.

“Let someone else go after her,” Angela growls, “let anyone else go after her. She will kill you.”

“She would attempt to kill anyone else. Angela, I am a soldier. This is my duty.”

“And you regard duty above all else don’t you?” Says Angela, and there is another depth below the words: above me. And an ache in the tone which conveys them.

Fareeha has been an engineer, and a tactician, and a warrior, all before she even really knew Angela, and she finds it unfair that Angela would try to guilt her away from all of that experience and dedication and pride.

“Do not make me choose between you and my job, Angela,” she says, and if there is a little bitterness in the words; she does not care, “this is my life. This is who I am.”

“A murderer.” Angela says flatly. “With a vendetta and a death wish. I _know_ who you are Fareeha Amari.”

It hurts, it will always hurt: the words people thrown in anger.

Fareeha had told Ana to stay out of her life right before she had disappeared; had told her father she hated him for leaving before he moved halfway across the world. Fareeha has never felt a more bitter breach of the heart than not being able to talk to a loved one after throwing a punch.

If she leaves in eight hours to an icy gaze from Angela and dies (it is possible, likely even, that she will die) what will flash behind her eyes in those final lonely moments?

How much will she regret in her last breath?

“That is not fair,” Fareeha says, “regardless of my feelings, someone needs to go.”

“It could have been anyone. You did this; you choose this.”

“And what would you have said if it had been anyone else?" Fareeha snaps, "Would you have wished them luck knowing their likely fate? Would you have felt better knowing that they died instead of me - so that you could look me in the eyes and say: I’m glad it wasn’t you. So that I could sit alone and think: I could have prevented this. Is that what you want?” Fareeha breathes deep and regrets her next words even before she says them. What a mistake. What a low and petty hit. “Are some lives more valuable than others, Angela?”

Angela throws a punch.

There’s a lot behind it, and she hits Fareeha in the cheek and it probably hurts her more than it hurts Fareeha but there’s pain enough for them both.

She is crying, Fareeha realizes.

She has made Angela cry.

“ _Fahr zur Hölle._ ”

And so Fareeha does.

There is no final night, no goodbye, no loving embrace.

In those final moments, Fareeha thinks she’ll regret almost everything.

* * *

So it is Widowmaker; heartless and cold and endlessly calculated.

So it is Amélie Lacroix, trained under her mother when Fareeha was not (not permitted). Who was Ana's protégée.

And maybe there is a bit of bitterness and jealousy and a hundred other emotions which lead Fareeha into this mission. This death march.

A thousand other emotions war in her about the silence of Angela, the coldness upon her departure, the tears Fareeha can still see when she closes her eyes.

It is unfair.

 

Life, that is - and how Fareeha has never seemed to make the right choices.

It is all so remarkably unfair.

* * *

 

When she is shot, she almost does not feel it. When she is shot again, she feels every moment of it.

It is venom in her veins; it all burns; and she screams but it is only her and Amélie. Amélie who watches her wither with glee. She is the most heartless. She will have destroyed, in her own way, two Amaris.

It all burns.

It all _burns._

Fareeha cannot remember what it is she regrets, but she regrets it none the less.

* * *

Ana saves her. It’s only fitting.

Widowmaker has escaped, that also seems pretty fitting.

Fareeha stares up into the rafters of the safe house, the venom still pulsing though her veins, though the nanotechnology is fighting it off ardently.

 _“You should have known better,”_ Ana tells her from her chair in the corner, sipping tea and reading. “How foolish for you to go after Amélie alone.”

It is almost infuriating, the way the world seems to step to the side of Ana Amari. As if she is something holy.

She is only human. Fareeha hates her for it at the same time she loves her. _She loves her so much, why did she leave?_

“I was only taking advantage of time sensitive information,” Fareeha croaks. The side of her head hurts, so does her chest. Widowmaker is precise if nothing else. “You would have done it,” she says.

“And Angela asked you to stay.” Ana plows on, ignoring her. Fareeha doesn’t respond. “You are just replaying all of my mistake,” says Ana.

“How so?” Fareeha asks, humoring her.

“I had reasons to play it safe,” Ana tells her, bold and direct, she looks Fareeha in the eyes squarely and never backs away. “I would have never quit, naturally. You knew that; you never will either. But I had you. I took missions I should not have, because I could. And you, alone in Egypt, waiting for me to return: who would have told you that in my selfishness I put myself over you? You, my beloved, who I claimed to protect.”

“You never failed,” Fareeha tells her.

“Did I not?” Ana responds, “I left you. And you grew up reckless and goal oriented. You became me.”

“Some would argue that was not a bad thing,” Fareeha replies. It is bitter because she does not want to be her mother. Does not want to live in that shadow.

“I am not infallible, Fareeha.”

Fareeha hums, unconvinced.

“You chased her because you thought someone had to,” Ana says, “and so you have overlooked an important fact: Not all information requires immediate action.”

_“Do not lecture me.”_

“Despite what Winston may suggest, no mission should be preformed solo. Overwatch has _always_ relied on a team. You should remind him of that.”

Fareeha does not respond, part of her knows her mother is right. The other part of her is in agony and knows nothing at all.

 

* * *

 

When Fareeha returns back to base she is only marginally better. She is bandaged around her chest and her scalp and she is in measurable amounts of pain.

It is late. She had been unable to call in, she missed the rendezvous, she is technically missing in action, presumed dead.

She should report immediately to Winston.

Instead, she goes to Angela’s, knocks on the door; waits. Angela opens a few moments later.

She looks truly disheveled and she clearly was not asleep.

Fareeha starts to say “I’m sorry” but only gets past _I_ and Angela is hugging her and crying and smacking her chest.

 

“I should not have gone,” Fareeha tells her, ignoring the pain, and hugs her back. “I should not have gone, _I’m sorry_.”

“Where did you go?” Angela chokes.

“My mother,” Fareeha tells her but says little else. “What I said to you - that was out of line,” Fareeha tells her, “I told you this was my job, but it was not. This was personal and no one needed to go. I went anyway. I hurt you.”

“I don’t care,” Angela says, “I do not care what we said, I know it matters and I will care later, but right now? Right now I do not care.”

And so Fareeha stands there in the glow of the dimmed lights, holding Angela and holding her close and trying desperately to imagine all the time in the future where she chooses this, above all else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always: kudos are appreciated! Comments are also always appreciated. <3


	11. The Art in Perseverance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angela's curious about a tattoo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a small vignette. I couldn't sleep last night. 

The first time Angela sees it, Fareeha is doing pull ups, the muscles on her back contracting around her shoulder blades, the skin crinkling, distorting it.

Angela is so distracted, so unabashedly intent on her skin and the form in which she moves, she forgets to ask.

Honestly, she forgets quite a few things. When she retreats, brushing past Zarya in her haste, she does so with a blush that feels a bit ridiculous.

She is not entirely sure that Fareeha ever knew she was there. She is too ashamed to tell her. (She does not know that Zarya mentioned it, that Fareeha - grinning like a goofball - was particularly happy to hear that Angela had apparently been blushing.)

 

* * *

 

The second time Angela sees it, it is summer, the sweltering heat has made everyone lethargic. Angela has traded her lab coat for a tank top and loose pants.

She finds Fareeha in the courtyard, laying on her stomach in the grass, reading. If Angela is dressed liberally, Fareeha has dressed in abandon because she is only wearing a sports bra and basketball shorts.

Angela spends a moment tracing the lines of her calves, the dimples above the curve of her rear, the muscle of her shoulder blades (which Angela has a certain fascination with) and then stops on the tattoo between them, and remembers the question from before.

She approaches her, sits down beside her. Fareeha turns her head to the side to regard Angela through bright eyes, her chin tucked into the curve of her elbow. The book is laid out in the grass in front of her but Fareeha closes it when Angela sits down and Angela can see that it is poetry which is not entirely something that she expected, honestly.

“Hello,” Fareeha says, lifts her head up and smiles. Angela returns it easily, stretches her legs out in front of her, falls back on the palm of her hands.

“Hello there,” she replies.

“How are you?” Fareeha asks, “I feel like it has been awhile since I have seen you.”

It has been. Angela has been locked up in her lab, baking under fluorescent bulbs, for the better part of a month and her contact has been minimal. Fareeha had stopped by occasionally to drop off food and remind her to sleep (which Angela had done, begrudgingly). But in that setting, that frame of mind, it was hard for her to connect with her surroundings, and so Fareeha had come and gone and come again and Angela’s nose had been buried in reports and monitors so the visits were never casual and often very quick.

“Better, now,” Angela confesses. “I’m glad for the fresh air.”

“You picked a good day,” Fareeha tells her. Angela tends to agree, she has no complaints about the company.

For a long while they are silent as birds chirp and Fareeha goes back to her poetry. Angela’s glad just to be relieved of her responsibilities, to feel free as she so rarely does these days.

She looks around idly, sees the tattoo again on Fareeha’s back, and this time doesn’t stop herself from reaching for it, brushing her fingertips over the hot skin (warmed by the afternoon sun). It’s simple, geometrical even, made of dots and lines in white ink the shape of an arrow pointing up Fareeha’s spine until it stops at the the base of her neck.

Fareeha shivers below her touch as she draws over the lines.

“It’s very pretty,” Angela tells her, sincerely.

“Thank you,” Fareeha says, “it was my first tattoo.”

This piques Angela’s interest. Angela had always assumed that the one on her face had come first. It does not occur to her that there might have been others before, or others at all.

“Is there a story?” Angela asks. Fareeha grins, Angela can’t see it, but she can hear it her voice.

“Only vaguely. It’s a reminder, to always reach higher and to achieve greater things.”

“If it is a reminder, why the back?”

“Because that is where we carry things,” Fareeha tells her simply.   
  
Angela cannot know Fareeha’s dreams of literally going higher, to touch with her own hands the stratosphere and to spend eternity in the vacuum of space, if possible. Those great wonders which inspire imagination, which had inthralled Fareeha as a kid. Maybe she will one day; maybe the conversation will come up again and she will talk at length about how she has always wanted to escape.

Angela hums in understanding, contemplative for a minute, and then she leans forward, places an open mouthed kiss above the arrowhead. Fareeha’s skin is warm and salty with the light sheen of sweat; Angela feels protective, responsible in someway for the burdens Fareeha carries. This leads her up the column of her neck and then to her cheek and then to her lips.

Fareeha kisses her back without complaint, though clearly perplexed.

“Very pretty,” Angela repeats and has the sense she is talking about more than just the tattoo this time.


	12. Smoke Break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone's got a bad habit. Even Angela.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not angst, really ... but not fluff either. I promise I'll get back to it, the prompts I've been getting recently just aren't very fluffy. ^^; (So I blame them).
> 
> Anyway, an anon asked for Angela smoking. This one did .... really well on tumblr.

It isn’t a habit, entirely. She does not skip out in the day to come out here. She knows the medical ramifications, has studied them intently in school, and later, on her own; a morbid curiosity into her own self-destructive tendency.

Everyone has them, Angela reasons, why shouldn’t she? She is not an angel, for all she pretends. For all she hopes and aspires to. In her mind there is an ideal woman there: proud and strong and unbelievably kind. Angela endeavors, and she fights - as she always has. One day, she thinks, she may become the thing the world repeatedly tells her she is.

It is midnight, everyone is asleep, and she is sitting on the flat metal roof of the base in Gibraltar, mapping the constellations her father had once pointed out to her.

It’s the anniversary of his death - their death. The neural implant in her spine is dislodged by a fraction of a hair from a previous mission and it _hurts_.

Angela lights a cigarette, her knees pulled up and tucked under her chin and she accepts the pain of both these things as wisps of smoke float away, illuminated by the moonlight; there’s Orion.

The other night Angela had sat beside Fareeha and pointed out the stars, their significance - had talked about Greek mythology, a favorite subject of hers, and had listened to Fareeha recount what she remembered of Egyptian mythology from her time in school. Angela, studious to a detrimental degree and endlessly fascinated with the things Fareeha has to share, looked up more, learned more.

Angela breathes in; breathes in smoke, lets it burn her esophagus a little bit, thinks of how it is killing her a little more with each drag and admits to herself that she may truly love another person again.

It is terrifying.

It is terrifying because Angela cares deeply for life, in general, her friends in particular, but she knows that each string she ties to them, binds them to her, is a liability - the best medical professionals in the world are the ones who look first for results; last, out for the people around them. Statistically, their accomplishments are often more significant. Angela has always kept a professional distance - it is the best way she knows how to save lives.

Fareeha is a wild card. She is so brave and so loyal and so unbelievably beautiful, good, much more than Angela deserves. And yet she lingers; to eat lunch with her and invite her out to walk around town; to spend thirty minutes at a claw machine in a super market trying (unsuccessfully) to win trivial items. (Angela has the dinosaur shaped trinket on her bedside table even now).

Angela sighs, the cigarette is to the filter so she unfurls, presses it against the heel of her boot to extinguish what’s left and puts the butt back in the box, to be thrown away later.

Orion hasn’t moved, her parents are still gone, the pain at the base of her neck is nearly unbearable.

Perhaps nothing has changed.

Angela brushes off her pants, shivers against the chilly evening air and considers going back to her room. Walks there, in fact, but detours to walk further down the hall, to stop at a familiar door.

Should she go in? She has before.

Fareeha is undoubtedly asleep; Angela would be displeased if she wasn’t.

The door opens for her when she slides it. Fareeha, afraid of confined spaces, small rooms, does not lock doors. She has confessed this to Angela; not even bathroom stalls, she is especially adverse to elevators.

Angela removes her shoes, placed them by the entrance. Removes her pants and her sweater and folds them, placing them on Fareeha’s desk, so that she is standing in her shirt and underwear.

She moves to the bed, sees Fareeha there, sprawled out as she often is - the woman does not sleep as she had once assumed she might - curled into herself. She’s breathing through her mouth, her shirt loose, her hair splayed against her pillow.

Angela pushes her lightly and she stirs, she is a notoriously light sleeper.

“Hmm?” She hums, and moves slightly towards Angela. Angela crawls over her, lays in the space between Fareeha and the wall.

“Can I stay?” She asks, quietly.

“Of course,” replies Fareeha, wraps an arm around her middle to pull Angela into her. Angela is not always in this position, sometimes Fareeha hurts too, so they trade. But tonight Angela wants to be held and she is glad for it.

Fareeha buries her face in the nape of Angela’s neck and even that seems to alleviate the pain there (tomorrow she will have to fix it; tonight she cannot be bothered).

“I did not know you smoked,” Fareeha says eventually; it occurs to Angela she must smell the lingering traces there in her hair, or perhaps from her mouth as she breaths out.

“I don’t,” Angela says.

Fareeha squeezes tighter, seems to engulf her. She says nothing else and soon her exhales even out and Angela is left awake, feeling warm - so warm. Feeling okay.


	13. Ilios

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fareeha jumps off a cliff; Angela is along for the ride.

The sea is effervescent, foam crashing against the shoreline sand, like bubbles from a child’s soapy wand; the sun is more radiant than any other light source or star - but not quite as radiant as Fareeha, laughing, arms clasped tight around Angela’s middle and they are falling, falling - in love, maybe - into something else; the ocean; straight out of the clear, blue sky.

“Fareeha!” Angela shouts, her heart racing quick against the fragile flesh of her chest, her laughter like chimes, the wind rushing past both their faces in a gust of salty air, whipping hair and stray bits of clothing. They are a flag, or a leaf, or a streamer - free things. 

_My god,_ thinks Angela, utterly in bliss; for the first time - unable to articulate her thoughts. The crystal, calcium-copper of the Raptora’s colors, mirrored on Fareeha’s bathing-suit (too bright for a battle field) seems to finally belong - here, in Ilios, picturesque and yellow, blue, and orange. Purple sunsets and golden sunrises.

“Hold your breath,” Fareeha tells her. It can’t be below a shout, doesn’t sound above a whisper, but her voice is chuckling, sincerity and security; Angela does what she is asked - would do anything Fareeha ever asked of her.  


Fareeha would never make her uncomfortable, would never demand of her what she wasn’t already willing to give.

They hit the water in an zealous splash. Air rushes out of Angela’s lungs and the light disappears for just a moment, replaced with a dull glow. The sound of bubbles fills her ears, and a rush of waves. She opens her eyes and it stings, but there is a curtain of rippling light above them where the sea distorts the rays of sun into a blanket of fractals; and there is Fareeha, still scrunching her eyes shut tight against the impact, hair flowing out in the current, tendrils and wisps - she’s so beautiful … Angela stops, hard stops, that’s all there is: _she’s so beautiful._

It has to be pure stupid luck but Fareeha leans in on a whim and 

her lips land on Angela’s, and 

the little air remaining in Angela’s lungs finds its way into Fareeha’s mouth in a pleasant gasp and

a fit of giggles.

A second later they break the surface breathing hard and wiping their eyes of stray droplets; Angela smiling, Fareeha grinning, the world is warm, burning; moments - it’s just a moment, a month, a year; with Fareeha it feels like a lifetime. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This didn't do well on Tumblr but I really love it, so I'm subjecting it to all of you, too.
> 
> Anon asked for: pharmercy+Ilios+kissing


	14. Chance Encounter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fareeha only anticipated a glass of water.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something small I wrote awhile back but I think is kind of cute and quirky!

“I need you,” says Mercy, the shadows under her eyes darker than the hour before dawn, coffee cup in hand, looking for all the world like a dead woman standing, “to never speak of this. To anyone.”

Fareeha blinks dumbly, the glass of water she’d come to the kitchen to get is on the brink of falling out of her lax grip.

When you see someone like Angela Ziegler - protégé and perfectionist, never misses a step, is always very aware of her spacial surroundings, and thoughts, and actions - walk head-on into a door frame, the world seems to shift a bit. Things become unbalanced. Everything becomes possible.

Having the doctor, nerd, closeted klutz like Fareeha back becomes less of a pining fool's pipe dream.

“ _Ever_ , Fareeha,” Angela emphasizes. It sounds almost like a threat, almost like a plea. Fareeha, not knowing what to do, nods blankly and scuttles out of the communal kitchen area clutching her drink.

It takes her half the walk back to her dorm to realize she’s been bubbling laughter through clenched teeth the entire time.

She thinks she’s in love.


	15. A Night at King’s Row (NSFW)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fareeha would call it opportunistic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple of weeks ago I asked for prompt requests in the form of a ship, place, and action. I got a few (all pharmercy. ;) This one was Pharmercy + King’s Row + Making Love.

It is one finger, then two, and Angela’s thumb rubbing light circles against her clit. Fareeha arches up, bite her lip to keep from groaning too loud in the dark hotel room. Angela hovers above her, laughing softly.

“Do you like that?” She whispers, her fingers curling inside Fareeha; Fareeha curling into the action with soft gasps and half thought retorts. Now may be a time to make jokes, but everything is so acute and tangible, Fareeha can hardly breathe.

The fabric of her worn sleeping shirt brushes briefly across her nipples and it is all quite a lot to endure at once.

The only light in the room falls across Fareeha’s stomach in soft lines; falls across Angela’s face in the same pattern; filters in through outdated blinds as neon pinks and blues from the pubs on the street two stories below. The sound of distant merriment and laughter floats on the air - Londoners enjoying the weekend with a few pints and good friends late into the evening, early into the morning.

Angela’s mouth circles Fareeha’s nipple through the fabric, as if aware of her thoughts and Fareeha breathes through the pleasant friction of the damp material as Angela’s tongue flicks and teases. Her hands grip the sheets to prevent them from reaching for Angela, afraid that if she touches, the other woman may stop.

They are here on a mission; they have their objectives.

It has been three months since they have been on a mission together; five weeks since they have been on base together for longer than a weekend.

Call it opportunistic.

Call it -

“Angela-” Fareeha gasps into half light, the other woman’s fingers moving slowly in and out of her, picking up in pace until Fareeha’s muscles are tense and each trust is met with an equal buck of hips.

Angela chuckles again when every part of Fareeha meets her in the middle, contracted and panting, and her lips leave her chest to fall on Fareeha’s in a deceptively chaste kiss for their current position.

“I have missed you, schätzeli,” she whispers, as Fareeha’s mind goes perfectly blank. A few minutes later Angela smiles, removing her fingers and running her damp hand across Fareeha’s partially exposed midriff, caressing lovingly.

Fareeha would respond, but she is breathless; somewhere else, where the world is hazy and warm and her ears are ringing and her vision is blurred by blue, ocean blue, pink lips, yellow hair, bright, bright - so she only hums against Angela’s mouth, a breathless chuckle, and enjoys the moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Over the next couple of days I'm going to try to add a lot of prompt fulfillment fics I haven't posted yet. 
> 
> There are ... so many. I'd only been posting the ones I liked before, but it would be nice to have them all in the same place, after so long. 
> 
> I figured I'd go ahead and add two tonight and make one of them NSFW so that I could change the rating and upload from my phone moving forward. 
> 
> That said, sorry I've got no idea how to write smut. I don't know why people keep requesting it from me. :')


	16. A Night; Out in London

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Double date: Lena, Emily, Fareeha and Angela. (Based on a very nice prompt!)

Fareeha is just getting back to their base of operation from a grocery trip when Tracer zips by her in a flash of blue. There’s a pause, a gust of wind, Fareeha’s hair flutters briefly forward, and then Lena is standing in front of her again.

They’re in London on an assignment; she, Lena and Angela, holed up in a one bedroom flat in the northern part of the city. It’s a diplomatic affair - less inconspicuous then some of the assignments they’ve been on - and it is for this reason alone the Lena, although a member of the mission, has been staying at home - with Emily, it might be worth mentioning. By Lena. Frequently.

To say Fareeha is surprised to see her isn’t quite right, Lena has been checking in periodically throughout the week, but she is a bit caught off guard. It’s nearing evening, and previously all of Lena’s visits have been in the afternoon. Fareeha blinks down at the younger woman, expression somewhat puzzled.

“Hello sunshine,” she says.

“‘Ello love,” Lena replies, chipper as always, and grabs one of the two paper bags Fareeha is currently holding. “Fancy meeting you all the way out here.”

“We’re on the steps of the flat, Lena,” Fareeha smiles, and begins walking forward.

“It’s a joke,” Lena calls from behind her, laughing, and together they head inside.

 

* * *

 

Angela is preparing coffee when Fareeha opens the door, bag in hand.

The doctor hears her almost immediately and flashes a smile her way. She’s out of work attire now - flannel shorts and a loose-fitting shirt of some cartoon from the early 2000s (Fareeha has known for awhile that Angela wastes no time in getting comfortable off the clock, but the sight is still endearing).

“Oh good!” Angela says, half over her shoulder, “you are back! I just put coffee on; did you get the things for supper?”

“Mhmm,” Fareeha hums, and walks through the threshold, flanked by Lena. It takes a moment, Angela isn’t particularly paying attention, but at about the time Fareeha sets her bag down on the island in the kitchen, Angela spots Lena behind the other woman, and her smile seems to brighten.

“Hello, Lena.”

“Hi, doc!”

There’s a pause as Lena sets her bag next to Fareeha’s, and then a moment later, in a fashion so befitting Lena, it is almost second nature to expect it, there’s a flash of jovially blue and Tracer is at Angela’s side.

“You two look comfy, hmm?” Lena says, grins, elbows Angela lightly.

They are; the assignment is two weeks long and they’re just finishing up the first week. Their bags are half unpacked in the living room and the bedroom door is open, its light off. No one has slept in there in two days. The fold-out couch is opened into a bed, and sheets and pillows are haphazardly strewn about it.

Angela and Fareeha have fallen asleep the past two nights on the sofa, shoulder to shoulder, watching campy crime-drama movies on the BBC. It happens; they haven’t really talked about it... but Fareeha had woken up with an arm over the other woman’s abdomen both times, and after the first time, Angela hadn’t even attempted to get to bed at a reasonable hour to avoid the repeat the second night.

“I suppose,” Angela responds, deflective, with a smile. “Is something the matter, Lena, we weren’t expecting you...” there’s no malice in Angela’s words, just genuine curiosity.

Fareeha has always marveled at Angela’s ability to speak, and never be misinterpreted. (Its ironic, Angela has made a dozen advances on Fareeha, all misinterpreted as kindnesses.)

“No, love, not a thing. Em just wanted me to invite you to dinner. We know a pub up the tube a bit. Bloody good bangers and mash, good beer, too.”

Fareeha is sure she has heard all of those words individually and that they made sense then; but in this context? She’s a bit confused.

“Tonight?” Angela asks. Lena nods, smiles in that charming manner she’s perfected so well. While Angela’s thinking on it, Fareeha makes sense of the invitation and grins at the two.

“We should go,” she says, “we have been holed up for three days, it will be good to get out.”

Lena looks between the two and her grin is shit-eating it’s so obnoxiously large.

“Three days is it?” She inquires, her voice higher than normal, teasing.

It takes moment for Angela to finally agree, and a few minutes after to put away the groceries, but eventually Lena gets both her colleagues out the door and on their way to meet Emily.

 

* * *

 

It’s a trap.

Angela should have known; she’d been naive, lured into a false sense of comfort - what with the uproarious atmosphere of the pub, the band in the corner stage playing soft rock, the drinks. God, she’d had a few of those. (Large glass mugs, frosted for the aesthetic.)

Lena and Emily are sharing a plate of food, grinning and laughing at one another and holding hands and being so adorable. (Lena thinks, in these moments, that when she has to leave, to return to Overwatch, her heart will break a little, as it does each time. It’s awful, every time - but the world needs heroes, and she wants to be one of them. Emily understands; she’s the most amazing person because she understands.)

They’re all having a good time when Emily’s eyes seem to sharpen with intent, and she focuses on Angela

Lena shares a glance with Fareeha, both recognizing the atmosphere has shifted a bit.

“So how long have you been dating?” Emily asks, innocently. Angela glances up from her plate at the tone. She has made her career reading people; she sees right through the facade.

Next to Emily, across from Angela, Lena takes her mug of beer and begins drinking briskly, guiltily.

Angela looks between her two friends with scrutinizing glances and then leans back, just a bit.

“Emily Oxton,” Angela asks, “is this a set up?” Her eyebrow goes up just a notch in disapproval.

To her side, Angela hears Fareeha snort into her fish and chips, endlessly amused by the ‘mother-tone’ as she’d once dubbed it.

“No, not at all,” Emily responds, because she knows how to play the game. “It’s just been so long since we’ve caught up!”

Fareeha interjects here, wiping her hands on her napkin.

“We’re not dating, Emily,” she says; her voice pleasant and even; so like Fareeha. So disarmingly smooth and final all at once.

Emily and Lena share a knowing look that Fareeha and Angela only briefly consider.

“You’re joking,” says Lena, looking almost surprised. Fareeha blinks, her eyes dart briefly to Angela and then back. “We thought - well, we thought you were just tryin’ to be sneaky,” Lena laughs, “you seriously aren’t dating?”

There’s a break where the two older women seem caught up in something; Fareeha’s brows furrow just briefly.

Fareeha thinks of them, she and Angela, their closeness, their intimacies, their understanding often without need for words; the way they work together. There’s a pause, a moment of reflection, a realization.

Fareeha turns to Angela with a questioning gaze, as Emily and Lena shake their heads in utter astonishment across from them.

After a time:

“Why ... why are we not dating?”

There’s a small silence, but it’s just a pause really, before Angela begins to laugh, and when she’s settled, she says fondly:

“I am not sure.”


	17. Doctor's Orders

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fareeha gets sick and Angela is there to help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been writing a lot recently and this was just a small story from earlier in the week that I thought was cute. 
> 
> One day I'll get all of my little stories posted here .... one day ... but in the interim, hope you enjoy!

“I do not understand why no one seems to believe me when I say that they are getting sick,” says Angela, annoyed, as she riffles through the medicine cabinet in Fareeha’s bathroom. “I am not saying these things just because I enjoy hearing myself speak,” she continues, “I did not spend eight years going through various medical schoolings just to come out unable even to detect the early signs of a flu.” At this point she is just driving the point home. Fareeha has no desire to argue. In light of her current state she’s just … not in the condition for it. (Sometimes she does push back a little, if only because they're both stubborn, and Angela isn't _always_ right.)

Fareeha, who is half under a blanket, half laying over it, throws an arm over her red eyes and sniffs miserably. She can’t breath through her nose right now, so her exhales come out loudly through her mouth, and she feels as though she is both freezing and burning, and always just on the edge of what promises to be the worst headache. She has felt this way for most of the previous evening, and had thought that, it being her day off, she could simply sleep it off today.

She hadn’t anticipated Angela stopping by, and although on most days she would not complain, today she had half hoped not to see anyone - this was only marginally fueled by her desire to hide the fact that she had blatantly ignored the doctor’s advice.

(Angela had seen her the day before; had advised she sit out the optional mission she’d signed up for, as the doctor had taken one look at her and thought that Fareeha might be about to come down with something. She’d been right, of course…)

Angela wanders back into Fareeha’s bedroom with a bottle of pills and a glass of water. When Fareeha sits up in her pathetic, sickly way, Angela hands both to her. Angela’s actions are practiced and efficient, and nearly indignant. Which seems unfair, considering Fareeha is the one who is sick.

“Take two,” Angela tells her.

Fareeha does as she is told; it hurts to swallow but she’s spent enough time ignoring the doctor’s advice, maybe now is the time to listen.

After she’s taken the medication Fareeha turns back to Angela.

“Not that I am complaining,” she says, and her voice is scratchy and low, “but did you need something, Angela?”

Angela retrieves the glass and takes it back to the bathroom. When she returns to the room, she responds.

“No, I only wanted to make sure you were doing alright.” She tells Fareeha evenly, and looks at her in that distinctly carrying and simultaneously disappointed way she’s mastered so well. Fareeha’s stomach flutters and it likely has little to do with her current state. “I know that you can be stubborn on good days; you should not be made to suffer… even if you did bring it upon yourself.”

Fareeha smiles sheepishly and rubs her sweaty palms on the sheets around her.

“This is very kind of you,” Fareeha says, and her smile is adorable and small.

Despite herself, Angela finds she is smiling back.


	18. An Encounter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A passing meeting and a couple of quips!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really short; I just thought this one was cute and I’d share it before heading to bed.

“I am still deciding whether I like you,” Fareeha says, her lips quirked up just a bit, into the beginnings of a grin.

Angela smiles back at her from across the kitchen island. Her mug of cocoa steams pleasantly between her hands and she laughs softly into the empty space between them.

“Oh? And what reservations are making your decision difficult?” She asks, casually, almost. Angela has a hard time being truly casual, but with Fareeha she relaxes a bit. Fareeha makes her feel comfortable, free of expectation.

Fareeha pretends to think and the  playful gives Angela a look.

“Yesterday I saw you heading toward the gym only to catch sight of Winston, pivot and walk away quickly.” Fareeha tells her, and smirks in the way only someone who has caught someone else doing something they shouldn’t can. “That is behavior worth noting.”

Angela blushes.

“I love Winston,” she begins. Stops, considers her words. “But it is important to be prepared for a conversation with him… I thought perhaps the timing was off.”

Fareeha hums, and for a moment she sips her tea as they look at one another silently. Laughing with each other, almost, but without sound. After a time, Fareeha steps away from the counter, announcing (a bit hesitantly, Angela thinks) that she needs to head off.

This is a chance encounter, after all. Fareeha and Angela are often not in the same place. Their assignments are different, and generally so are their sleep schedules, but every now and again the stars align and they run into one another.

Angela grabs her mug and steps away from the island also, prepared to return to her lab. She has a suspicion that Fareeha has just returned from a mission, and is likely headed towards her dorm. This knowledge makes her stomach flutter for reasons she is a bit too tired to invest thinking in.

She steps past the Egyptian woman as she makes for the exit. Stopping just long enough to nab a bit of whipped cream from her mug onto her pointer finger.

“Well,” she tells Fareeha, as she passes her towards the exit, and smiles genuinely. “Despite your feelings, I certainly like you.” She punctuates the statement with a tap of her cream-covered finger on the other woman’s nose. Winks for effect, and exits the common kitchen area with a quick lick over her finger and a friendly waive. “Good night, Fareeha. Please get enough sleep.”

Fareeha watches her leave, surprised. She is left standing in an empty room, tea in hand and blushing profusely.


	19. Cuts and Bruises and Kisses (AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Given prompt: “pharmercy featuring Thor cute tiny kid”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fluff. Super fluffy. And short. :)

Angela’s remembering the first time she laid eyes on Ilanit; how she’d been so small. When Fareeha had tried to hand her over, Angela had backed away, fearing she’d hurt the baby.

At that point in her life, Angela had worked with children, the elderly; heroes of every age had passed through her office, confident that her hands (nimble hands, says Fareeha, beautiful, perfect, efficient, a thousand adjective; ‘words don’t do you justice, and I know about justice.’) would do them no harm.

But Ilanit had been an infant, and Angela had been at war with her morals, and more literally, a war; she just wasn’t sure.

It had been a blessing to be one half of two mothers to Ilanit, and a terror at the same time.

(Fareeha compensated; whatever they were to the world, Fareeha had been the perfect mother, right from the very beginning.)

Angela’s remembering the first time they laid eyes on Ilanit. As the girl, eight years old and a ham, walks in now, Angela sets down her book, let’s the memories drift away, and frowns in cautious disapproval.

“What happened to your face?” She asks.

Ilanit’s got a cut on her cheek and a black eye. A moment later Fareeha stumbles in behind her, grinning sheepishly.

“What happened to _your_ face?!” Angela’s up now; she rushes over to the two, picking up Ilanit and holding her In one arm as she runs deft fingers across Fareeha’s cheek.

Her wife is bleeding and grinning, and holding a seashell between them.

“Ilanit found a seashell, isn’t it beautiful?”

Ilanit grins “I found it on the shore!”

Angela plucks the shell from Fareeha’s hand and inspects it as Fareeha leans into her ear.

“It was in a rocky cove and we fell, but we are alright, habibti,” Fareeha whispers, and kisses her cheek.

Angela blushes and her worry and momentary flare of indignation fizzles into a fit of giggles the entire family shares.

“It is very pretty,” she finally concedes.


	20. An Indication of Things to Come

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the eve of the new year, Angela is in an Egyptian bar, waiting on Fareeha.

Angela Ziegler goes looking for Fareeha Amari at the edge of all things; at the frontlines of a war; in a little desert dive fifty kilometers west of the Temple of Anubis Necropolis.

  
It is the Gregorian Calendar’s eve of the new year, Angela is 30 years old, and she is, for lack of any better or more relevant descriptor, tired.

  
She and Fareeha have kept in contact over the omnilasting years since Ana; since Overwatch’s disbandment; since life changed for them both so completely.

  
Angela has a folder in her email titled simply “smile” and in it are hundreds of conversation chains with the woman who has lately been showing up in unexpected places: her dreams and the unmonitored strategically-vacant corners of her mind while she works.

  
One of the emails, the latest, has information with the name and address of the bar. Fareeha has given this information along with a response to Angela’s prior email. It is short but not insincere. Fareeha’s squadron is stationed just outside of an oasis near the Necropolis, their accommodations don’t permit visitors on ground but she’d be happy - more than happy - to meet Angela. Her captain is friends with the man who owns the bar, Angela is welcome to stay there for a time and Fareeha is excited to meet up with her after work. _Arriving the 31st? Perfect. But Angela, are you alright? I don’t mean to be inhospitable only, you have never indicated a desire to visit before._

  
Angela doesn’t tell Fareeha about the crippling loneliness she feels in the isolation of her work as a field medic; how each day it seems a little less like she is helping, like the world can be changed. Not because she does not want Fareeha to know, or because she thinks Fareeha will not understand - she has known the other woman long enough to believe that it is more likely Fareeha would understand better than anyone else. It is only that Angela has seen the world at its worst and from a very young age. There is a point, she has discover d, at which there is nothing that can be said, because it will do no one any good.

 

* * *

 

  
Angela finds the dive with reasonable ease, gets a room, has a glass of wine, and watches the sun sparkle across the gleaming sand outside the window (eventually setting beyond the horizon) in relative silence, though the establishment is more than a little boisterous, and she smiles and talks, when able, to the barkeep who has promised her a free meal if she can throw a date pit into a cup down the bar from where she is sitting. Which she can, and does, and only looks a little smug when the man returns with the promised meal and a look of contained reverence.

  
It is the first time in a long time Angela has looked around her and thought that this is a world she is happy to be a part of. There’s an omnic playing music in a far corner, and two women talking animatedly with their hands at a table not far away, and a couple drinking something, and Angela is smiling at all of this when the front doors open and Fareeha finally walks in.

  
She’s dressed in a leather jacket, a sheer white button-up underneath, a lopped scarf around her neck Angela can only guess is often used for keeping the sand out of her mouth throughout the day. Her jeans are dark, and well-fitted and her boots go up mid-calf. It has been 3 years since last Angela has seen the younger Amari and she blinks because so much has changed, but when Fareeha spots her, the woman grins and waves and perhaps so much has remained unchanged as well.

  
When she grins, Fareeha looks unearthly.

  
Angela gets up from her stool and strides Fareeha’s way. Fareeha meets her in the middle, hugging her without reservation, a muffled “hello, Angela” is pressed into her hair.

  
“Hello to you, too,” replies Angela, feeling warm in the embrace and the cozy atmosphere of the establishment, despite it only being about 10 Celsius just beyond the door behind them.

They say a couple more things to one another before Fareeha waves at the man behind the bar in greeting, whom Angela had only recently still been teasing about the dinner ordeal, grabs Angela lightly by the hand and guides her out onto the screened-in patio. There are only a couple of people with them outside, presumably because it is chilly, though three heating towers are emitting warm glows of red lightning up metal poles.

Maneuver around the heaters, they find a two-person table up against the low stone wall which services as a partition between the patrons of the bar and the passers-by on the street.

“I’m sorry you had to wait so long,” says Fareeha, as she sits. Angela follows suit, “I wanted to be here earlier, but we,” she stops, redirects: “… our task went longer than expected.”

Angela can see them now: cuts on the left side of Fareeha’s face and neck. She wants to inspect them closer, the proactive medical-professional instinct to investigate and treat is there, but she knows Fareeha will not appreciate it. Fareeha has had far worse than a few scratches.

  
“I hope your flights weren’t bad?” Says Fareeha, and grins sheepishly.

  
“Uneventful,” Angela tells her and smiles, “I’m glad to finally be here,” Angela laughs and Fareeha’s grin broadens.

“It’s so good to see you.”

“You, too.”

They catch up. There’s a lot to say, but none of it really is. Instead, they talk about trivial things: the weather, Fareeha’s new cat who guards her apartment in Giza and hiss at her when she comes home. (“I think he thinks that I am the intruder, because I’m gone so much.”) Work, briefly. They talk about hockey, which Angela does not follow, but Fareeha is very excited about. Angela talks about a medical journal she read recently, which she can tell Fareeha does not understand at all, but is making a valiant effort in trying.

  
They talk about life, to a degree, after awhile. Fareeha says:

  
“I’m glad you got away from your duties for a few days.” And takes a drink from her glass. It’s maybe 15 minutes from midnight and although Angela gathers that the affair isn’t as big a deal here, there are a group of people across the road setting up a small array of fireworks to bring in the new year. Angela, mid-chew on some bar snacks, swallows and asks:

“Really?”

“I’ve been thinking for awhile that your emails have sounded a bit short,” Fareeha admits, and her words aren’t offensive if only because she sounds truly sincere in her concern. “I didn’t know if I would be overstepping by telling you so; when you mentioned you wanted to visit it only enforced what I already suspected.”

Angela doesn’t know what to say and mildly thinks that she has not given Fareeha enough credit for her perception. 

“Which is?” Angela asks.

“That you’re not happy, Angela.” 

Angela blinks and says nothing; it doesn’t seem like there’s anything to be said. Fareeha grins and pushes away from the table a little, an act that Angela, who knows a bit about body language, instantly recognizes as a physical manifestation of the subconscious act of disengaging from a topic.

“I only want you to know,” says Fareeha, “that I have always found you to be the most compassionate and indisputably and truly good people I have ever known. Ever since I first met you.” She matches Angela’s attention, but not the embarrassed blush Angela suspects is making its way across her cheeks. “They are qualities I have found in you which I want to strive for myself, and which I find … uh,” Fareeha trails off, finishing a beat later with: “beautiful. You deserve to be happy.” Fareeha smiles at her, looking a little uncomfortable. She takes another sip from her drink, but when she sets the glass down again she meets Angela’s eyes and her whole expression is almost serious, in its intensity, even with the vague flash of teeth of Fareeha’s returned grin.

Angela can’t find the words to express her gratitude. The emotion burns behind her eyes and it is months, and months, and years of fear and concern that she isn’t something - enough, maybe? And here Fareeha is, a beacon on the coast of an ocean of turmoil. 

Across the way, the fireworks go off in little splashes of light and color and design to the accompanied laughter of the group that set them up. They’re not as extravagant as the excessively large shows in England and America, but they’re charming. They explodes across Fareeha’s cheeks in episodes of red, white, green and blue as she blinks and turns her focus to the display. Her eyes shine, reflecting the spectacle.

Angela isn’t sure what she’s doing: watching Fareeha, a moment later when she leans over the table, cups Fareeha’s face in her hand and redirects the woman’s attention back to her.

“Thank you,” Angela tells her, and closes the gap.

Fareeha’s eyes flutter shut immediately, her lips lift up in a smile against Angela’s as they kiss.

She doesn’t say anything, but that action alone is enough for Angela.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Years you guys. New Years being my favorite holiday, I thought it only right to write a little something. Very self-indulgent, I’m not going to lie.
> 
> Feel free to leave a comment. :)


	21. A Conversation With Ghosts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fareeha speaks to the wind and Angela’s parents.
> 
> Given prompt by sword0fstorms over on tumblr!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning up front for parental death.

Fareeha stands respectably back as the team wander through rows and rows of headstones. They are organized in remarkably straight lines, just a few words on each. The structure reminds Fareeha of the rows of Tulips she recalls seeing in Holland, but the comparison is off, somehow, and she wishes the thought hadn’t occurred to her at all.

A ways off Jesse stops at one, sits down, and does not stand again for a very, very long time. Fareeha guess it is Reyes’ marker but will not disrupt her friend’s silence to confirm.

Reinhardt moves aimlessly amidst the rows; his broad shoulders sag under years and years of memories.

Angela does not immediately go to, but eventually ends up at, a pair of stones towards the edge of the large field; they, and their surrounding neighbors, are a bit larger in size, more is written on the stones and they contain personalized touches. Bundles of flowers are sat on some. It does not take long for Fareeha to come to the conclusion that that section of the cemetery likely contains more than a marker. Burials happened there.

Fareeha watches Angela until she remembers herself. She pulls her attention away, feeling like she is interfering with something she should not be.

The ruins of the Overwatch Swiss headquarters gather snow in the distance. Fareeha does not focus on them. She stares for awhile at the bare branches of a tree overhead; its wood creaking against the wind and the ice in its veins.

By her feet is Ana’s marker.

It’s a lie, of course. Ana has been sending Fareeha letters for years. The marker is just another indicator of her mother’s continued service to her ideals above all else.

Reinhardt comes to stand beside Fareeha sometime later; neither of them speak. After awhile he lays a hand on her shoulder. Fareeha looks up to him and he gives her a warm smile only someone such as Reinhardt can.

“She would have been very proud of you,” he tells her. Fareeha gives him a small smile back and says nothing.

Ana hasn’t told him.

Reinhardt, who has only ever proclaimed his love for her mother and sorrow at her absence and Ana had not even bothered to tell him she lived.

What’s more, she is not proud of Fareeha. This much she has made obvious in her letters.

Reinhardt turns then, to the expansive field and bellows, so that the others can hear him: “I believe a drink is in order! Find me at the pub down the street!”

He squeezes Fareeha’s shoulder once, and then sets out for the front gate, and off in the direction of the pub. There’s a heaviness about him he hides, because at his heart, Reinhardt will always be the foundation upon which family is mended.

Slowly, the others trickle out after him. Other than Fareeha herself, Angela is the last to leave. Eventually, she stands from the stones she has spent most of the last hour by and makes her way to Fareeha. Fareeha has made a home, sitting up against the tree, her gaze on Ana’s marker, but her mind elsewhere.

She refocuses as Angela approaches, blinking away the trance.

Angela is a bit red-eyed but as beautiful as always. Her black coat is doted with snowflakes not yet brushed off, and her hair is down, helping to fend off the bitter cold.

“Are you alright?” Fareeha asks, when Angela is close enough.

“Hmm,” Angela replies, holding out her hand to Fareeha. “Just a little sad.” Fareeha takes the offered hand and Angela pulls her back to her feet. Standing, Fareeha wraps her arms around Angela in a tight hug. She’s not sure if it helps, but Angela returns it and surely that means something.

“I am sorry,” says Fareeha, her lips near Angela’s neck are chapped and the words feel insignificant leaving them.

“It was a long time ago,” Angela replies, her voice soft. There’s something in the way Angela speaks, but Fareeha can only imagine she wanted to add more. _It was a long time ago… why does it hurt so much._ They stay like that for awhile, it seems alright. When Angela pulls away her cheeks have a bit more color, her eyes are a little less puffy.

“Would you like to join the others?” She asks. Fareeha smiles at her before her gaze flickers to the headstones again.

“Go ahead,” Fareeha says, “I will join you all in a few minutes.” Angela brushes some snow out of Fareeha’s hair with a fond smile and nods.

“I’ll buy your first drink.”

“You are an angel.”

Fareeha waits until Angela is nearly at the gate before she makes her way towards the Ziegler’s plot.

On closer inspection, the stones appear to be not as well taken care of. It seems fair, Angela can only be prompted to talk about her family in any clear detail when drunk. It must be very hard for her. Fareeha can image, but tries not to. For the five months she thought Ana had died, her heart had been shambles. Even after the first letter arrived, she woke in the night sweating. Nightmares of lost loved ones.

“She missed you so much,” Fareeha tells the stones, her breath leaving her in whisper of white. “Even when she never says so, I see it in her drive. In the work she does. How badly she never wants anyone to lose the ones they love. I think she does it for you.” Of course, there’s no response, but Fareeha is not in the habit of talking to herself, and if such a thing is possible, she hopes Angela’s parent can hear her. “It is so easy to love Angela. Never worry that she will be lonely again. She has family in you, and family in us. And … and, well, I love her.” Fareeha pauses, averts her attention to the cloudy sky, says: “Perhaps that means something.” Says: “thank you.” Says: “Until next time.” Turns to leave…

… and Angela is standing there. Fareeha blushes until she feels warm and Angela does not say anything. She loops an arm through Fareeha’s when Fareeha walks up to her and leads her towards the exit.

“Let’s go,” she says quietly.

There’s no replacing the parts of Angela that are full with the memory of her family; Fareeha knows this. Even if they are bittersweet moments and melancholy - Angela is the product of their influence, and she prospers for it. Fareeha is comforted in that. Still, she has endeavored to be everything that she can for as long as she can, because that is what the other woman means to her.

They walk into the bar to Jesse ordering a round of shots. Angela and Fareeha are immediately handed something which is probably whiskey, as Jesse raises his own glass.

“A promise:” he says, and they listen, “never a day I ain’t thinkin of you, and ain’t that day ever coming.”

Who knows if Jesse is thinking of anyone specific. It seems universally applicable. The group raise their glasses in acknowledgment, down the liquid, and another round is ordered.

Angela kisses Fareeha on the cheek as they find seats between Winston and Lena.

They drink well into the night.


	22. A Reprise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fareeha trains in the morning and Angela meets her on her way in.

Angela doesn’t mean to catch her, doesn’t mean to stare when she does.

  
Angela can see Fareeha through the open blinds in her lab, Raptora on, visor down. It’s the dead of night, almost morning really, and Fareeha is 50 feet in the air dodging flying disks from a training bot.  
Each shot lights the sky in a dull burst of sparks, like a small fire cracker. Angela has seen Fareeha in aerial training before; in the test chamber, dodging bullets from McCree’s peacemaker, and out in the field covering the sky, but this is different.

  
Fareeha’s movements are lessrefined and every now and again one of the metal discs collides with her armor in an enamoring display of sparks, metal on metal. Angela can tell, Fareeha is intentionally taking the hits. She can’t begin to guess why.

  
For awhile, Angela simply watches. It must be freezing out there, and there’s no moon but every star in the sky is a pixel point of light in a black backdrop. Angela has never seen anything more breathtaking.

  
At around 4 in the morning, Angela packs up her lab, locks everything away, and takes off down toward the base entrance, where Fareeha will be coming in any minute (she’d been landing when Angela was just leaving her office).

  
Angela loiters for another ten minutes by the door until finally, wrapped in a leather jacket, still wearing the lower half of her armor, Fareeha stumbles through the sliding doors, disheaveled.

  
Angela doesn’t give her a moment to contemplate what is happening or why when she grabs Fareeha by the collar, pulls her off to the side and drags her down for a kiss.

  
Fareeha’s lips are cold and her eyes open slightly before fluttering closed. Angela hears the clatter of the Raptora’s chest plates hit the ground only seconds before her back hits the wall behind her, a low chuckle, Fareeha breaks away to lay her head on Angela’s shoulder; the area chills and then warms as Fareeha regains a little heat.

  
“Good morning, beautiful,” Angela hums, sneaking a hand up Fareeha’s back under the material of her compression shirt, her fingers trailing the lines of Fareeha’s skin.

  
“Morning.” Fareeha responds, “you’re up early.” She lifts her head to flash Angela a tired grin which has been the feature in no small number of dreams.

  
“I suppose that makes two of us,” Angela responds and kisses her again.

  
Angela imagines that Fareeha had been out there because she couldn’t sleep, and although admirable, Angela makes it a point to tell Fareeha on their way back to her room, that there are better things to do when struck with insomnia.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This snippet was so self indulgent. I think I’ve written a similar scenario somewhere earlier on, but eh - sometimes there are different ways to say the same thing. I don’t think it’ll hurt to have both. :?


	23. A Reprieve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fareeha And Angela discuss the merits of answering the recall.

It was always going to be more than she wanted: Overwatch. The recall. The joy and the laughs, and the relationship and the everything.

Good-intended as Overwatch has always been, Angela places the letter on her desk and wishes that Winston had just left it alone.

Fareeha is in Egypt, debating answering the call. And tomorrow, Fareeha will be in Switzerland with Angela and they will have to figure out what doing so will cost them.

Angela will not go back to that place; will not pour her soul into her work to have it ripped off, mutated, to have her higher ups assure her they are the good guys, while systematically and clandestinely murdering sets of individuals unaligned with the values of Overwatch.

Once, she had been young and wishful and optimistic, and that had cost her everything. Had cost innocent people so much more.

 

* * *

 

“Don’t we have to start somewhere?” Fareeha asks her, turning her mother’s Overwatch-issued comm device in her hands. She sets it on the tabletop between them, presses a button, and she and Angela stare into the holographic invitation of the recall.

Angela watches it for a moment before turning it off and taking a sip from her mug.

“There’s nothing Overwatch was or can become that won’t eventually lead down a bad path, Fareeha.” Angela tells her, “it wasn’t a sainthood.”

“No,” Fareeha agrees, thinking of her mother - the very woman who stole Angela’s technology, famously became an unnervingly effective bounty hunter. “But good people must rally around something. Why not this?”

“Why not common decency and empathy?” Angela responds, it comes out scathing but she’s not mad at Fareeha, particularly, just the state of things. For Fareeha’s part, she doesn’t mind, or at least, not visibly so.

“Because those things do not have faces, Angela; perhaps what the world wants is not an ideal, but an individual.”

For a very long time the silence between them lingers like the stale air of a hospital waiting room. Finally, Fareeha speaks again. “I’m joining,” she says.

“I know,” Angela responds, with a silent plea not to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I no longer have any clue which ficlets I’ve posted and which ones haven’t yet been posted. At this point I can only hope that I don’t eventually post a duplicate :’)


	24. (AU) How’d I Ever Get So Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Given prompt: Overwatch AU where Mercy was turned into Reaper instead and Pharah finds her in the watchpoint Gerbalta mournfully looking at her caedus staff without her mask for the first time in years as she notices blackened tears coming from her face.

Pharah’s assignment had been clear, had been given by Winston, seconded by Jack Morrison - er, Solider: 76 - (both of whom had known Angela Ziegler before she’d become Reaper, back when she went by the call sign Mercy). It was simple: _find her._

The implicit order of which had also included: _and if possible, kill her._

Pharah remembers Angela.

Remembers being twelve and seeing her around the Swiss base, remembers being eighteen with the beginnings of a crush and the idea forming in her mind of what it could feel like to love women.

Remembers being twenty-two, sitting on a patio (looking dazedly from the glittering stars and moon above, it had been a full moon that night, to the glittering desert sand around her, wind-blow into the dinky town), half tipsy from a night out with her squad in a slummy bar in Egypt. Angela walking to her, gait stiff and formal, cheeks and shoulders sunburnt, freckles blooming over both. Angela sitting across from her, Fareeha drunkenly - foolishly - thinking this was some sort of fantasy; foolishly thinking of hitting on her. Angela, refusing to meet her eyes. Angela telling Fareeha that Ana had been killed. _Honorably_ , she’d said, the word coming out like acid.

Fareeha does remembers Angela Ziegler.

Pharah exhales sharply, lets go of the things she remembers. That Angela, who’d hugged her and had said _I am sorry, sorry; I am so sorry,_ while Fareeha had blinked stupidly into the bar, watching her squad mates celebrate life, doesn’t exist anymore.

She lifts her hand to her visor, flips on the thermal detector and scans the rubble and debris of the former Watchpoint: Gibraltar, decaying under its own disuse. She doesn’t expect to find anything, not really. It makes more sense that Angela, no, Reaper would go to the destroyed Swiss Headquarters, undoubtedly more familiar to her. And yet, there is a heat signature here, coming from the old research lab. The entity wavers more like smoke and less like a person and Pharah is not a betting woman, but she would recognize that presence anywhere.

By memory alone does Fareeha know the way; can pleasantly recall obsessively studying the layout of the Gibraltar base, naively believing that it would better her chances of becoming an Overwatch agent herself one day, and perhaps being stationed here. She lets that memory guide her now, not bothering to look around.

It is funny, in the humorless way things sometimes are, that it took her mother’s death, the rise of something like Talon, and the Overwatch recall to persuade fate to lead her here, finally.

Pharah raises her rocket launcher as she approaches the research bay, uncomfortable with the closed-in corridors of the base. She would have prefered the open skies of the world outside, where her footfall did not echo quite so loud, and where she would not have to worry about firing too close - but circumstances are rarely so favorable.

Pharah also figures: it is not worth it to try a clandestine approach, Reaper has no doubt already heard her, the best Pharah can do is hit hard from the beginning, be physically superior. So, rounding the corner, she kicks open the door, raises her launcher, finger already on the trigger, half way to firing, and then stops. Dead in her tracks.

Angela is on the ground, on her knees. The bone-skull mask which Pharah has become so familiar with, which Pharah has seen these past few months since the recall three times (and had nearly died at each instance) is shattered in front of her. She is crying, Pharah notes, the lines where salt and water should be bleed against not-real skin.

It is the first time since Angela had told Fareeha that Ana was dead that Fareeha has seen her face. It is not the face she remembers, red and freckled; it is a hazy, smokey idea of that face - like looking at a reflection in water, the structure is there, in fragments, but cannot be solidified, cannot be confirmed.

Pharah will not lower her rocket launcher, and cannot look away. In front of Angela, on the wall, in a glass case, is the Caduceus staff. Angela’s crowning theory - to bring back the dead. Pharah has seen schematics in old databases, and has read a bit about it, and vaguely remembers overhearing her mother talking to Gabriel about it, how it defied medicine. The joking quip in her voice when she’d said a nano boosted dart in the ass worked just fine.

“Can you imagine…” says Angela, an odd raspy strain to her voice. She is staring blankly at the staff. Her hands, curled into fists against the floor. “Can you imagine what it would have been like? If it had worked?”

Now, Pharah lowers her rocket launcher. This is the decision that has cost better men than her their lives. Even so, Pharah had known, accepting the mission, that she would not be able to kill the woman in front of her. She’d known, and gone anyway.

“You would have saved many good people,” says Pharah.

“I could have saved your mother,” replies Angela, “and Gabriel.” There’s an odd, tense moment of bitter silence. “Myself,” Reaper says.

“Are you not alive?” Pharah asks, steps further into the room. Angela laughs, but it is cold and hollow.

“Am I? I cannot tell.”

“You are,” Pharah says, “or else I am talking to a ghost.”

Angela stands, her heeled boots step on the shattered pieces of her mask as she turns away from the staff, faces Fareeha. Fareeha sees it now, the streaks down her effervescent cheeks, how painful it must be to cry, given the way Angela’s pupils shake slightly like she is breathing through a crushed esophagus, choked by an unseen entity.

“You are definitely talking to a ghost,” says Angela, a faint lift of the lips. And then: “how did I know that Jack would send you?”

“Winston, actually,” Pharah corrects. Angela looks pained for a moment.

“Winston should not be in this war,” she says, “he should be in a lab, making the world better.”

Pharah watches Reaper, cannot reconcile the broken mess of a person standing before her with the nightmare who had shot two world leaders, raised a man unwillingly from the grave, burned a city to the ground.

“There was a time I thought the same of you,” she says, can hear a crack in her own voice. Fareeha Amari will not cry behind the shield of her visor, will not. _Will not_. And yet, the hot liquid trickles down and she feels betrayed.

“In another life,” Reaper says. In another life, where Mercy joins the recall and is not destroyed by her own desire to help herself and Gabriel, caught in the cross-fires of an Overwatch implosion. In another life, when the staff works and doesn’t turn her into this half-lifed thing, and brings Gabriel back from the dead. In another life, maybe, but not this one. There’s a moment, an intense look, a vacant breath of air exhaled by the wind alone. Reaper does not have lungs. “I am not a bad person, Fareeha.”

“I know,” says Pharah. “But you have done such terrible things.”

“In justification,” Reaper responds.

“Enlighten me,” says Pharah.

“I cannot,” says Reaper, “I have promises to keep.”

Pharah thinks of the world and the honor and the justification; the lies they all tell themselves just to make getting up in the morning a tollarable act. 

“I am sorry; I am so sorry,” says Fareeha, echoing something she vaguely recalls. Reaper turns her back to Pharah, breaks the glass and grabs the staff. For a brief, fleeting moment, she looks angelic.

“Mercy,” Pharah says.

“I only ever wanted to help as many people as possible,” says Reaper, “no matter the cost. Nothing has changed.”

And then she ghosts past Pharah, nothing but smoke, black smoke, and Fareeha is left alone. Blinking stupidly at her reflection in the broken glass, looking remarkably vacant of life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t know why I never posted this one earlier. To be fair, it wasn’t one I was particularly proud of, but there have been pleanty of those (most of them, really). I really need to backfill quicker haha... 
> 
> Anyway, the chapter title comes from lyrics from the Mother, Mother song, Reaper Man, which is something I sing literally every time someone on my team chooses Reaper. My friends are not fans but they are accommodating.


	25. The Necropolis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fareeha and Angela aren’t sent to find Jack and Ana; instead, they find a moment of quiet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really liked this one; it was another that didn’t do super well on Tumblr, but that’s alright. I meant to post it a lot earlier, though I think at one point I thought I might try to expand it, which is probably why I didn’t.

Fareeha has never been here, and judging by Angela’s curious, roaming eyes, the medic hasn’t either.

It bleeds of Ana, though - and Jack Morrison.

The location, the remnants of her mother’s hiding, the Necropolis - city of the dead. They’ve come to find her - them - but like ghosts, the old soldiers are long gone; there’s nothing left.

“Fareeha,” says Angela, “come sit with me,” she pats the limestone roofing of the ruins they’re walking across. Fareeha does as she’s told, stripped of her chest plate and most of her armor, she sits down in only her leg protection; feet dangling off the building, down, down into the pitfall below. It is alright; both Angela and Fareeha have learned to fall gracefully.

Angela’s got a cigarette resting unlit in her hand, supporting her weight as she leans back. She’s looking at a photo - one of Fareeha and Ana, a dozen years ago. They found it in her mother’s hideout, shoved in a crack in the floor and lost, for all intents and purposes. Fareeha doesn’t care to ask to see it.

“I don’t think that they will return,” Fareeha says, and looks up to the stars above them. Out here in the desert, not ten miles from Giza, it is astoundingly dark. The Milky Way stretches like a band, ethereally, almost perfectly above the Pyramid of Khufu and Fareeha is so far out her depth she does not even have the forthwith to hold her breath.

“It’s beautiful,” Angela says quietly, all at once acknowledging and ignoring Fareeha’s words. They’re quiet for awhile, comfortable in their silence. The doctor lights her cigarette and in the void, the glowing embers of burning paper and tobacco resonate like a waypoint; like something which should not be ignored.

“It is,” Fareeha says, smoke floating past her, carrying a long forgotten scent - reminiscent of the army, her allies who shared puffs in their downtime, the warm Egyptian sun burning their skin raw just as the sand had; Aahil, who offered her a drag in high school when they ducked out during lunch to sit in the shade of their worn and sandy school building. All good memories, in their own way.

Fareeha watches Angela, unearthly in the starlight and red glow, before blinking up toward the pixel-point constellations above; at peace in a way Fareeha has never felt.

Fareeha focuses on the smell, the dirt digging into her palms and the homey image of a criminal’s cavern in the walls of the ruins behind them.

And then the stars, the ones in Angela’s eyes and those twinkling overhead. The silence of it all.

A moment’s rest before a storm.

“This is my first time in Egypt,” Angela confesses and laughs softly in a dry sort of unhumored way. “All these years... I’ve missed how beautiful it all is,” and her eyes are not on the sky, her hand clasped tight on the crumpled picture.


	26. Snippets Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some fluffy snippets, too small to be separate chapters!

Angela’s only been to the American West a couple of times, but being in it now, she can see why Jesse speaks so fondly of it.

He sets a cup of coffee on the railing beside her and goes to take a seat on the stairs leading up to the wrap-around porch which is their haven of the moment.

“Instant,” he says, “ ‘m sorry about that.”

Out and around them the sun is setting just over the horizon and the fireflies are making an ardent effort at turning the ozone into a second night sky and close by, Fareeha is passed out on Angela’s shoulder not snoring exactly, but something close to it.

Angela pushes and the swing bench they’re on sways softly with the movement.

“Coffee is coffee,” Angela smiles, and takes a grateful sip. “It is nice here.”

“Ain’t nothin’ like a desert sunset,” Jesse says, a smile in his voice.

Angela’s about to respond, but in the swinging movement, Fareeha falls into her lap. Angela runs her hands through the woman’s hair and thinks of something much better, but doesn’t say it.

* * *

 

Fareeha concedes she is probably in love, but doesn’t say so. Amidst the war-time battles and duties, it never quite feels right; always feels a bit like a burden she would never willingly place upon Angela’s shoulders. The doctor already has so much weighing on her; so many lives she has promised to protect ... asking herto consider the possibility of Fareeha is a cruel request among so many other desires vying for her attention.

No, Fareeha does what she must and moves forward.

Fareeha concedes she is probably in love, and says nothing of it; the bombs and the silence which follows. The smoke and the mirrors and her deep, unspoken aspirations. One day, she hopes - in the future, perhaps.

* * *

 

“Angela,” whispers Fareeha, as Winston draws a grid on the rotating presentation board at the head of the conference room. Beside Fareeha, Hana is doing an excellent job of pretending she’s awake and to be perfectly frank, the rest of the room seems to be in similar spirits. Angela’s eyes flicker to Fareeha, her hands, one resting in her lap, the other studiously noting something in her journal, still. “Would you...?”

Fareeha glances down, she moves her left hand, previously clutching the metal side of her office chair, to the empty space between them. Angela’s eyes go back to Winston, but Fareeha delights in the smile that fills out her lips in profile. Angela laces her fingers through Fareeha’s under the table, brings both back to her lap, and continues writing.

The meeting is much more enjoyable afterward.

* * *

Fareeha clutches the phone in her hand as the sirens wail around her, an explosion in the distance tells her the fighting has not stopped, will not stop; a hail of bullets from the humans and turret fire from the omnics, catching walls and each other. Fareeha breathes deeply something which is toxic and can no longer image a place that isn’t exactly like this. Angela, on the other end of the line is asking her to talk, to say something. Against the brick wall behind her, Fareeha feels the weight of the world on her shoulder, her unit calling for her aid. Fareeha whispers: “We live on the cognitive edge of the death of morality ... and Angela, I am only trying to get home to you at night.”

Something pops, or explodes, or implodes, Angela says “don’t you dare leave me with that, Fareeha, do-“

Fareeha cuts her off, says “I love you,” and disconnects before she has time to imagine how bad she will regret the action.

She pushes her visor down, her chin up, and she returns to the war the world bred. She decides to protect, to be just and fair, to get home.

She has promised her wife she will come home.

* * *

 

“Stop, stop,” says Angela, grabbing Fareeha’s shoulder, “don’t go.”

There’s a blue-black sky speckled white with stars and the milky-purple band of a galaxy above them, and Fareeha’s dark eyes blown wide in the half-light, standing before her looking like an angel, like a figure out of romance-era painting, like perfection; the dimples in her cheeks and freckles on her forearms, painted with care by a higher power.

“I love you,” says Angela, breathless without knowing it. Unaware that it is the first time she has said the words since she returned them to her father all those years ago, when she rolled over in her twin-sized bed in her family-sized home and dreamed of childish things and never saw him again.

Fareeha looks her over carefully and there’s a brokeness in her eyes the world is not allowed to see, but which Angela can now - the way they flash like the flare across the scope of a rifle, somewhere in the middle of nowhere in a hot hot desert, and then gloss over with a thin sheet of water, how the rain does to the skin in the juggle, seeing too much and stopping too little - until Angela’s lungs feel devoid for how she holds her breath, and how Fareeha saves her as she always has when she says: “I love you.”

Above them a satellite streaks by, and around them Talon is closing in on their crashpoint, and on them there are cuts and bruises, and in them is the terror of the unknown and the juxtaposed relief of an inhale - the first in a very long time, for Angela.

She smiles, and Fareeha grins; and even if it isn’t, it feels a lot like what okay might one day be.

* * *

 

“You have a cut,” says Angela, running her thumb along the soft skin of Fareeha’s forearm; the half-healed scratch there.

“Hmm?” Fareeha mumbles, half asleep. She turns, the fog of the unconscious allows only minimal understanding: enough to grab Angela’s hand, kiss her palm, turn over and fall back asleep.

Angela sits in the darkness, the room illuminated by the thin slivers of moonlight bleeding from the open blinds at the foot of the bed.

She holds Fareeha for a moment, the quiet omnipresent around them, and then sits up and moves to the end of the bed, her knees tucked up under her chin as she watches thin clouds through the blinds pass in front of the moon, shrouding the room, before they move on.

She’s happy, in this moment. It’s bittersweet, as all of the brighter parts of her life have been, but the joy in the sunlight and the laughter in the moments with her team, and the nights next to Fareeha: they all make Angela very happy.

“Insomnia suits you,” says Fareeha, after a time, her voice lowered by the grogginess of being awake. Angela turns to see her grinning sleepily. “Must be the bed head.”

“You’re a bad influence.”

“I don’t want to be,” says Fareeha. She reaches for Angela and pulls her back, wrapping around her in a bear hug and chuckling in a mild state of delirium. Angela laughs, too, gripping the other woman’s arms as they snake around her middle.

“Go to sleep,” says Fareeha, her breath a whisper against Angela’s neck. And who could turn her down?


	27. So Last Night Was a Lot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Fareeha and Angela date, breakup, and meet again during Recall.

Angela leaves and Fareeha does not follow.

The Egyptian sand under her feet reflects the fractals of a setting sun and turns the world metallic gold against the blues of the sky and her jeans, and the image of Angela’s eyes flickering like a burning reel in Fareeha’s peripheral.

Fareeha sighs, her hands deep in the pockets of her worn jacket, and tries to convince herself that every inch of her body is not convulsing in the pain of being left, again. By now, she can’t help but to think that she deserves the relief of being indifferent, but Fareeha has never felt anything in half measures. And, after all, mercy does not favor the foolish woman too blind to acknowledge she is standing in quicksand.

Fareeha’s fingers find the damaged edges of the doctor’s note, worn from folding, opening, reading, crumpling, flattening, stuffing in her pocket. Fareeha has read it a dozen times already, in the week since she received it, and promises she will never read it again.

 _‘So, last night was a lot.’_ it starts. _‘I said some things I should not have.’_

_“I hate this person you’ve become.” Angela had said, distant, distant, voice cold, as she had stood across the room. Closed off._

Fareeha clutches the note with one hand, the other covering her face in a vain attempt to stop tears. She stands, 25 years old, in the shifting sands of the desert and is not sure she’ll ever find sure footing again.

Above her, planes from the airport just out of the city whistle by and the sun leaves, and the moon makes its way across the sky.

Tomorrow is her first day of work.

 

* * *

 

Seven years after she joins Helix Security, Fareeha leaves it. It’s bittersweet, on the tail end of an awful mission, but her team is all the stronger for coming out of it together.

They throw her a party which involves too much alcohol and some truly horrendous toasts and if Fareeha chokes up around laughter they do her the service of letting it slide... mostly.

“To Amari!” Aizad cheers, everyone following suit.

Fareeha shakes her head, smiling as she sips from her drink. When they look to her for parting words, Fareeha finds the strength to push away her discomfort. She offers them, sincerely:

“You are family,” she tells them, and everyone quiets in the face of truths spoken so directly. “I wouldn’t leave you if I did not have the utmost conviction that doing so was necessary. But wherever I go, whatever may come, I look back to you, my brothers, and promise to give you everything that I am. No one knows me better; no one cares for me more than you; so ... thank you.” She raises her glass to them. She can see mist in Tariq’s eyes and the way Mahmud averts his gaze in solemn resignation for her departure.

The bar is dimly lit, stuffy, and smells of smoke. An omnic in the corner belts out some song or another in a key no human can, and is rewarded for the effort in tips and applause. The Helix team has been coming here for years after completing jobs. Fareeha’s team.

“You always have a home in us, Pharah,” Saleh finally says, embracing her, they knock heads and laugh a little off-kilter. Fareeha pats his back and watches the omnic collect their tips and the barkeep scold an underaged brat. She looks to one of the windows and sees the red sky, red sand, knows her eyes are red too, and is glad it’s too dark for anyone else to notice.

They return to their drinking, and Fareeha wonders if leaving these people, the people who have supported her through some of her greatest misgivings, is the right choice.

She thinks of Overwatch, the recall she has accepted, and hopes she has not made a huge mistake.

Would they forgive her, if she fails, if she came back to them?

 

* * *

 

Winston greets Fareeha at the entrance to his lab, and the greater Overwatch facility beyond. 

Fareeha puts on a friendly smile, one hand firmly around the handle of the metal case which contains her deconstructed raptora suit. With the other, she returns Winston’s hand shake.

“Ms. Amari,” he greets, “it’s been awhile.” 

“Almost 10 years,” Fareeha agrees, remembering her mother’s funeral too vividly, too unwillingly. “It is good to see you.” 

“You too,” Winston tells her. He offers her a lopsided grin and they stand there looking at each other for just on the cusp of awkward before he clears his throat and leads her inside. “We could really use a trained fighter like yourself. I’m so glad you accepted.”

They weave through corridors and exposed wiring; in disarray the way only unused things seem to fall. Fareeha makes a note of some of the worst of it; perhaps she can put her engineering degree to more use than just suit maintenance. Fareeha holds tight to the Raptora.

“To be honest,” Fareeha says as they walk, picking up the thread of earlier conversation, “this is something of a dream of mine. With Petras I never thought I would have the chance to return here.”

Winston hums uncomfortably against the reminder that all of this is illegal and turns to Fareeha, stopping just in front of a large set of double doors, looking a particularly fake kind of confident.

“The world needs heroes,” he says, and Fareeha cannot quite decide who he is trying to convince.

“Yes. It does,” Fareeha tells him with conviction. She has been told before she is determined, perhaps that will serve her here. Winston smiles for her, clearing his throat.

“I’ll - uh - introduce you to everyone else,” and with that, he turns and pushes the doors open, allowing Fareeha the opportunity to meet the individuals she will be working along side moving forward.

There are many new faces, younger fighters and a couple of celebrities she recognizes and is very surprised to see. Some she remembers from an era past - Jack Morrison, Torbjörn Lindholm, Lena Oxton. 

And there is Angela Ziegler.

All at once, seven years of recovery crumble around the damaged edges of a never-quite forgotten letter.

Fareeha is standing back in Egypt, watching the sky, her fingers clutched around balled-up paper.

 

_Fareeha –_

 

It says.

_So, last night was a lot, wasn’t it? I said some things I should not have. I am sorry for what I told you. Hate was a very strong word._

_But sometimes I look at you and I can’t see the woman I love anymore. All we do is fight and I am so tired. I don’t think we will ever see eye to eye about our philosophies on violence, and about where we fit in one another’s lives. I have always thought that we were on the same side, but lately that could not be further from the truth and I cannot do it anymore, Fareeha._

_You’re so mad, and so set on this path. Whatever it is you’re looking for, I know that I cannot help you, and I cannot support you. You are obsessed with Amelie Lacriox and one day it will be the death of you. It’s unhealthy. I thought that I could stand beside you, but I was wrong. I think yesterday only confirmed that - for both of us._

_So I’m going to go back to Switzerland. I—-ll—-w-ys-lo——-._

_Please take care of yourself._

 

_- Angela_


	28. A Fear of Heights

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A given prompt from waaaaaaaaay back when. I think the next few uploads I do are going to be from when I first started writing pharmercy (read: bad writing), but well ... this was always intend to be a collection of /all/ the pharmercy one-shots. Exceptions cannot be made. 
> 
> Prompt: "What if Fareeha has a phobia that's unexpected somehow? eg acrophobia(OH THE IRONY) or something funny, and nobody knows that the normally brave and stoic Fareeha can actually be scared?"

The thing about irrational fears is that they are … irrational. They make no sense. None at all.

Fareeha has not tried to explain the experience. Has not wanted to try to find the words to describe the feeling of inevitability. (The worst experience in the world is one which Fareeha deals with every day. She lies to herself; says it will make her strong, says it will pass.) Has not wanted to try to defend herself. She is not ashamed.

A fear of moderate heights, for someone who spends a large portion of her day-to-day at extreme heights is irrational. Undeniably so. 

Still, it is manageable. Fareeha does not climb up trees, or roofs. Will not stand on cliff edges. Mutes the communication channel for the twenty or so seconds it takes to pass the threshold of her discomfort zone to the ground. She will not let them hear her hyperventilate; does not want their unnecessary concern.

It is manageable.

It is manageable until it isn’t.

 

* * *

 

 

“I do not want it,” says Fareeha, who is normally a bit stoic, but never unjustly so.

Angela is not in the mood for a battle of wills. She is tried and she is trying to do her job.

“I am installing it into everyone’s armor,” Angela replies, “if I can have a constant read on your vitals during missions, I will be able to provide better aid when necessary.”

Fareeha clenches her jaw, looks purposefully just above Angela’s head, protectively positioned between her and the Raptora.

“Install the tech elsewhere; please do not touch the Raptora.”

Fareeha knows she is being ridiculous. Knows Angela is only trying to help; Angela only ever wants to help. Still, she will not be persuaded.

Something flashes across Angela’s face and Fareeha recognizes it as the same look her mother had given her right before she’d said _“I’m doing this because I love you.”_ (When Fareeha had applied to the Overwatch training program and Ana had come home that night with her application; ‘rejected’ written in the top in her mother’s fine script.) It is not a declaration of love, but it is a declaration of that tender emotion which comes with concern for the welfare of those you care about. The idea that a person knows what’s best for another person, independent of reason - based solely in feeling.

Fareeha wants to feel sorry, but will not allow herself. She is an adult, she is capable of making her own decisions.

 _“Fareeha,”_ Angela says, she sounds so tired, “I want your permission on this … but if I must, I will have Jack order it…”

And later that afternoon, they both stand in Soldier: 76’s presence. Angela argues her case, Fareeha tries to defend hers. In the end, Angela is granted the permission to install the equipment. Fareeha clenches her jaw and salutes because she is a soldier, and a soldier does not argue against their commanding officer.

And leaving, Fareeha feels something akin to betrayal.

 

* * *

 

The next mission they are assigned to takes them to the desert, bullets rain and Fareeha rains justice. Towards the end of the fight, her fuel tank depletes and Fareeha is cursing in three different languages as she desperately scans for shelter to take cover under.

Because it is habit, she mutes the comms just as she is nearing that point where she is not high enough to be safe, not low enough to run, where she sits like a target for any interested sniper, and feels the most exposed. Her vision tunnels, her ears ring, her breathing is short and erratic. She counts to five then down from five then to negative five as the psych elevator who cleared her for the army had instructed. She desperately rejects the memory of armor-piercing ammunition striking her arm, her leg, her chest, the blackout, the --

This time there is yelling in her ear. A private communication channel has been opened between she and Mercy through no action of her own and Mercy is panicky.

“Pharah?” She barks, “Pharah, report!” Fareeha doesn't. Not immediately 

Fareeha lands; her boots hit the soft sand and it is a blessing. She breaths deeply twice, to regain composure, before opening the channel, she hopes her voice is not rattled, but her prospects are not high.

“I am fine,” she responds. The gun fire has died away. Her visor tells her that Jesse is dispatching of stragglers, that Hana is disembarking for her MEKA, that Angela is coming toward her.

“Your vitals are all over the place,” Angela says, her voice efficient and precise. “Are you hurt?”

“No,” Fareeha replies, “no, everything is fine.”

“What happened?”

Fareeha hears it in her ear piece, but also in the flesh as Angela lands beside her. She takes off her helmet, Angela’s eyes are doing a quick analysis.

Fareeha knows she cannot hide it anymore, she wipes the sweat from her brow. Avoids the doctor’s eyes.

“It was just-” she stops, clears her throat, “just a panic attack.”

Angela watches her for a few moments, seems to think deeply for too long. And then asks:

“How long has this been going on for, Fareeha?”

It’s not disapproval, not really. It would be hard to call it anger either. It’s … something else. Something Fareeha cannot name. Which seems to be a trend in her life.

“Since shortly after I joined Helix,” Fareeha admits. “I have developed a … small fear of heights.”

Angela raises her hand, as if to brush it across Fareeha’s cheek, and then falls short, let’s it rest back at her side.

“You should have told me about this sooner,” she says, “as your doctor, I should know these things.”

“You should not have forced me to let you monitor my condition,” Fareeha retorts, “I should be allowed to decide what I share.”

Mercy frowns, the crease between her brows deepens.

“Normally,” she says after a moment, “I would agree with you. But you are part of a unit and there are certain liberties you forfeit when you join an organization like this.”

Fareeha knows. This is the life she has chosen.

“I know,” she says aloud.

“These repeated attacks are not good for your heart,” Mercy continues.

“I know,” Fareeha repeats; feels genuinely bad.

“I-” Mercy stops, considers her next words, moves forward: “I worry about you,” she says, “let me help you.”

There is not a word for the flutter in Fareeha’s chest. Not a word she knows, not a thing she could articulate, but she feels it just the same.

“I’m sorry,” she says. Not for the reluctance, not for not saying it earlier. If it happened all over; Fareeha would not change a thing. Only sorry for the worry. She never wanted to make Angela worry for her.

“Me, too,” Angela replies. There’s a lot of depth to it.


End file.
